SQLite format 3@  ii!%%atableTopicsTopicsCREATE TABLE Topics (Title NVARCHAR(100), Notes TEXT) )[ea01 The Deity of Christ{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 THE DEITY OF CHRIST (part 1)+a00 Clefts of the Rock{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CLEFTS OF THE ROCK\par The Believer's Grounds y K   ! \par by John MacDuff, 1874\par \par In a quaint but powerful way, MacDuff presents various aspects of the person and work of Jesus, as various 'clefts in the rock' in which the believer can hide himself for protection, comfort, and strength in his pilgrimage to his heavenly home.\par \par Preface\par \par 1. The Deity of Christ\par The Deity of Christ (continued)\par 2. The Humanity of Christ\par 3. Christ the Surety-substitute\par 4. Christ the Propitiation\par 5. Christ the Manifestation of the Father\par 6. The Immutability of Christ\par 7. The Sympathy of Jesus\par 8. The Tenderness of Jesus\par 9. Christ the Peace Giver\par 10. Christ a Savior to the Uttermost\par 11. Christ Risen\par 12. Christ Ascended\par 13. Christ the Intercessor\par 14. Christ the King\par 15. Christ the Judge\par 16. Christ Reigning over His Church Forever\par \par \par \b Preface\par \b0\par "O my dove, which is in the Clefts of the Rock."\par \endash Solomon's Song 2:14\par \par Rock of Ages, cleft for me,\par Let me hide myself in Thee!\par Let the water and the blood,\par From Your riven side which flowed,\par Be of sin the double cure,\par Cleanse me from its guilt and power.\par \par Not the labors of my hands\par Can fulfill Your law's demands:\par Could my zeal no respite know,\par Could my tears forever flow,\par All for sin could not atone:\par You must save, and You alone!\par \par Nothing in my hand I bring;\par Simply to Your cross I cling;\par Naked, come to You for dress;\par Helpless, look to You for grace;\par Foul, I to the fountain fly\endash\par Wash me, Savior, or I die!\par \par While I draw this fleeting breath\endash\par When mine eyelids close in death\endash\par When I soar to worlds unknown\endash\par See You on Your judgment throne\endash\par  Rock of Ages, cleft for me,\par Let me hide myself in Thee! \endash Toplady\par \par \par \par The name of this Volume will best interpret the design of its pages. They purpose, however inadequately, to set forth the leading grounds of safety and security, comfort and peace, which are to be found in the adorable character and completed work of the Divine Redeemer--"Clefts," to the shelter of which we can repair, alike "in all time of our tribulation and in all time of o ur wealth,"--in the prospect of "the hour of death and of the Day of judgment." To every believer, the words of Balaam's parable in a nobler sense may be applied, "Strong is your dwelling-place, and you put your nest in a rock," or those of the great Prophet, as rendered in the Septuagint translation, "His place of defense shall be in a lofty cavern (or cleft) of the strong Rock." It is the complex Person of "IMMANUEL, God with us"--the might and majesty of Omnipotence in conjunction with the tenderness o f humanity--"Our God, yet our Brother--our Brother, yet our God," which makes Him the sure and unassailable Stronghold He is. The 'Clefts,' where His people are invited to flee, are in a Rock--but, that Rock is "THE ROCK OF AGES!" Contemplating His Deity, they can utter the Psalmist's challenge, "Who is a ROCK like OUR GOD?"--yet they can add, "A MAN shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."\par \par It was the consci ousness of being sheltered in these divine clefts, that enabled the great Apostle to say, in his own name, and in the name of all in every age who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before them--"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Tribulation--Distress--Persecution--Famine, and the other adverse forces included in his enumeration, are so many waves dashing against THE ROCK--trying to 'separate,'--gathering their united strength to sweep from the secure shelter. But in vain. They are beaten back in succession with Faith's challenge--the reproof, not of bold haughty presumption, but of lowly believing confidence and heavenly trust--"In the name of a Mightier, we bid defiance to your might!" 'Who shall separate us?' "I stand upon a Rock," says Chrysostom, "let the sea rage, the Rock cannot be disturbed." "My flesh and my heart fails," says an older saint, "but God is the Rock of my heart and my portion forever."\par \par "It has pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell." As on the head of Christ, under the emblem of a King, there are represented "many crowns"--so, under the metaphor of a ROCK, there are represented many clefts. One Rock, but diversified grounds of confidence and trust; each one uttering a silent response and invitation to the quest of the weary soul--"Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest."\par \par The emblem of a Rock, as thus applied to the Divine Redeemer, is at once sublime, beautiful, and appropriate--suggestive as it is of strength, durability, shelter, safety. It speaks of nature's noblest monumental columns--concurrent with creation--as fresh as at first sculptured by the great Craftsman--older, grander, and more lasting than obelisk or pyramid, or most colossal work of human power. Over these rocks, have the winds of heaven continually swept. Age after age has the sun discharged upon them his quiver of golden arrows--but resisting all changes--defying all elements--outliving all political convulsions--no wrinkle can be traced on their majestic brow--now in sunny robes of roseate light--now gleaming in the moonbeams with silver mantle--now swathed in white garments of cloud--now curtained in raging tempest--now their echoes awoke with the trumpet of peace--now with the clarion of battle--but every hoary peak remaining immutably the same. Such, is "The Rock of our Salvation!"\par \par Each Reader will doubtless have his own associations with the figure; derived from some memorable scene in nature. The Writer may be forgiven a personal reference, if he venture to allude to the spot where his own thoughts invariably revert when the imagery of "The Rock of Ages" is before him. It is in one of those magnificent valleys among the Alps of Piedmont, visited in early youth, sacred to the heroic sufferings and triumphs of the Vaudois. There, a mountain, clothed at the base with varied fruit and forest trees, is crowned with a wonderful rampart of natural rock. Castelluzzo is pointed out to this day, by the descendants of the martyred Waldenses, as the place into which, during successive persecutions, when the adjacent valleys were desolated by fire and sword, their fathers often fled with their wives and little ones for safety. All the deeper was the impression made by this singular stronghold, from having been first seen, in descending the Italian side of the wild pass of La Croix, when the whole valley beneath was shrouded in fog. It towered in solitary grandeur above the sea of mist, and seemed, from its height, like an island suspended in mid-air. It has, or rather had, several remarkable peculiarities--as if the God of nature purposely upreared it to be a rampart for His oppressed people. Though of lofty elevation, it was rendered so accessible, that even mothers and their infants, with the aid of stronger hands, could avail themselves of its shelter. It had a cleft or opening on one side, by which alone it could be entered. It contained a spacious cavern, in which, fuel from the adjoining forest was readily stored, and at times corn and wild fruits were garnered from the neighboring productive slopes--while, in the center of the cave was a never-failing spring of water, which, in the hour of peril, completed the necessary supplies of the rocky citadel. The Divine promise was thus more than once literally fulfilled in the case of many noble sufferers for the truth, "He shall dwell on high; his place of defense shall be the munitions of rocks; bread shall be given him, his waters shall be sure." Once within it, the weakest felt secure. A handful of men, stationed at the entrance, by rolling down masses of stone (easily disintegrated from the sides and top of the cavern), could defy the assault of disciplined soldiers.\par \par The loftiness of the Rock--so often, seen wreathed in glorious cloud--the cleft--the one cleft--the accessibility--the spaciousness of the cavern--the secure shelter--the "fountain opened"--might well suffice to suggest mental pictures of a Greater and sublimer reality--"Lead me to the rock that is higher than I!"\par \par We shall end these prefatory words with an appropriate anecdote--may its concluding utterances be our own in a similar hour. It is the well-authenticated story of a Highland mother, who, at the close of spring, was suddenly overtaken, in a wild glen among the mountains, by what was long recalled by her fellow-villagers as "the Great May storm." After attempting in vain, for some time, with her infant in her arms, to buffet the whirling eddies, she laid the child down among heather and ferns, in the deep cleft of a rock; with the brave resolve, if possible, to make her own way home through the driving sleet, and obtain help for her little one. She was found by the anxious neighbors, next morning, stretched cold and stiff on a snowy shroud. But the cries of the babe directed them to the rock-crevice, where it lay, all unconscious of its danger; and from which it was rescued in safety. Many long years afterwards, that child returned from distant lands--a disabled soldier, covered with honorable wounds. The first Sabbath of his homecoming, on repairing to a city church (where he had the opportunity of worshiping God "after the manner" and in the cherished language of his forefathers), he listened to an aged clergyman unfolding, in Celtic accents, the story of redeeming love. Strange to say, that clergyman happened to be from the same Highland glen where he himself had spent his youth. Stranger still, he was illustrating the Divine tale with the anecdote, to him so familiar, of the widow and her saved child! A few days afterwards, that Pastor was summoned to visit the deathbed of the old soldier. "I am the son of that widow," were the words which greeted the former, as he stood by the couch of the dying man. "Lay my bones beside hers in the churchyard among the hills. The prayers she used to offer for me have been answered. I have found deliverance in old age where I found it in my childhood--in the cleft of the Rock; but it is--THE ROCK OF AGES!"\par \par May He, who of old attested with a voice from Heaven, "This is my Beloved Son," add His own blessing to this feeble attempt to direct the inquirer's eye to these glorious "Clefts"--to unfold and illustrate the grandest of all revealed truths--"the mystery of godliness--God manifest in the flesh." May the perusal of what follows, enable both reader and writer to subscribe with greater confidence to the Prophet's exhortation\endash "Trust in the Lord forever; for in the Lord Jehovah is THE ROCK OF AGES!"\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } \par "The Word was God."--John 1:1\par \par "Let no man go about to entertain the thoughts of the Great Mystery of Godliness, but with a ravished heart. You who are a Spirit, and therefore immaterial and invisible, to expose yourself to the view of earthen eyes; You who are an infinite Spirit, to be enwrapped in flesh; You an all-glorious Eternal Spirit, to put on the rags of human mortality; You the great Creator of all things, to become a creature; You the Omnipotent God, to subject Yourself to miserable frailty and infirmity; O mystery transcending the full apprehension of even glorified souls! Cease, cease, O human curiosity, and where you cannot comprehend, wonder and adore." \endash Bishop Hall, 1574.\par \par So spoke one who had folded his wings, as none other ever did, in "The Clefts of the Rock," who, as none other before or since, had obtained response to the invocation of the great Hymn\endash "Let me hide myself in You!"\par \par Sheltered in these sublime crevices during three privileged years on earth, overshadowed and canopied, as it were, by that mighty Presence, he could utter the testimony, not as hearsay evidence, not as a dry theological dogma, but as a blessed experimental truth, gathered from divine lip and look and heart, during the enjoyment of the closest contact and fellowship with his living, loving Lord--"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life. For the Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you."\par \par The cardinal foundation-truth of all theology thus stated in the prologue alike to the Gospel and the Epistles of the Beloved Disciple, is the supreme Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Other shelters would be worthless and unavailing without this. Indeed, it is not so much a "Cleft in the Rock," as THE ROCK itself, on which the Church of the future, and with it the hopes and aspirations of world-wide humanity, are built. It is the keystone of the arch. Remove it, and the whole superstructure collapses. More than ever, Luther said regarding justification, is it "the doctrine of a standing or a falling church." Take Deity from the tree of life, and its every leaf withers. Take Deity from the Rock, and its majestic places of refuge are turned into sand-c lefts; it ceases to be a "Rock of Ages."\par \par It is fit that we should commence themes which in future pages are to engage our thoughts, with what thus gives to that Rock its most glorious and distinctive title. There are special eras in the history of the Church, when truths we have been accustomed to receive with implicit unwavering trust, are either openly assailed, or sought to be shorn of their proportions and strength by the covert negations of a destructive criticism. Surely of all fo!rms of apostasy and error, that is incomparably the greatest, which would tend in any way, whether by bold assertion or evasive statement, to shake and undermine the believer's faith in the Godhead of his adorable Lord. Doctrinal subjects such as this may not possess the interest of others. We may prefer themes, such as several of those that follow, which come home to the conscience, and stir the affections and the heart. But it is needful, surely, and profitable also, at times to remove the debris--expos"e to view the great foundation of the Christian temple, and vindicate the peerless dignity of Him who to us as His people, ought to be, and we trust is, "fairer than the children of men."\par \par What more sacred thing is there on earth than to defend the name and honor of a beloved friend? If a parent's worth and goodness were assailed, his honor impugned--who that has the spirit of a son would not rush to beat off the unworthy thrust, and to throw the shield of protection over injured goodnes#s and worth? What shall be said when the glory of Him is tampered with, who is better than the best and dearest of all earthly relatives? Who dare be silent, when Arianism and Socinianism are endeavoring to pluck the regal crown from Immanuel's brow, making this very Bible (the mirror of His glory) to reflect unworthy humanitarian views of His official character and Divine Person? If these "foundations are destroyed, what will the righteous do?"\par \par Let us, then, obey the summons of the Pro$phet, and adopting his words, "go into the clefts of the Rock," to behold the glory of the Redeemer's Majesty.\par \par "What do you think of Christ?" "Who is this Son of man?" "All the city was moved, saying, Who is this?" "Is He no more than the first of the shadows of the past--the first of memories--the first of biographies--the most perfect of human ideals? Is He only an ideal after all? Does He reign only in virtue of a mighty tradition of human thought and feeling in His favor, which crea%tes and supports His imaginary throne?--or is He a super-angelic Intelligence, sinless, and invested with judicial and creative powers, but still separated from the inaccessible life of God by that fathomless interval which parts the first of creatures from the Everlasting Creator? Can He save us from our sins? Can He blot out their stains and crush their power? Can He deliver us in our death-agony from the terrors of dissolution, and bid us live with Him in a brighter world forever?" So states Canon Lidd&on, an able writer, the momentous problem that is now for a little to occupy our attention.\par \par Be it our endeavor to approach, with chastened reverential spirit, the sacred oracles, as the great and only court of appeal--the sole arbiter on this as on all other doctrinal questions. With the assent, alike of an enlightened intellect and sanctified heart, may we be prepared to subscribe to the comprehensive article first promulgated by the Nicene Fathers, and now for long centuries incorpora'ted in the creed of Christendom--"I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Begotten Son of God--Begotten of His Father before all worlds--God of God, Light of Light, VERY GOD OF VERY GOD!"\par \par Let us begin by rehearsing a few of our blessed Lord's own declarations regarding His divinity, and then see how these are borne out and supported by the inspired penmen. In other words (although we use the simile with all reverence), let us hear His own divine assertion of claims to supreme digni(ty, and then summon witness by witness to substantiate these. In doing so, we have to go over ground which has been often previously traversed. Farther, from the necessarily brief and inadequate treatment of which our space admits, we can do little more than quote some of the leading proofs in support of the great doctrine. May He whose special divine office it is to glorify the Redeemer, take of the things that are Christ's, and show them unto us!\par \par Let us listen, first, to one or two of) the testimonies which Christ Himself gives regarding His Divinity. We may premise, however, that His own utterances constitute by no means the strength of the argument. On the contrary, while on the one hand He does not shrink from a bold manifesto, or vindication of His divine prerogatives, when the occasion imperatively demands it, there is, at the same time, a marked and peculiar reticence in the assertion of His personal claims. And this itself forms a strong and direct testimony to the forcefulness *of these. So unlike an impostor, who would have taken every opportunity of loudly enforcing his pretensions. "I speak not of Myself." "Believe Me for the works' sake."\par \par In the 8th chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus was addressing the Jews in the Temple Treasury, and meeting their virulent cavils and carnal prejudices, as they boasted of their pedigree, and challenged what they deemed His blasphemous assumption of superiority over the great Father and founder of their nation. He makes t+he distinct announcement, not only of His pre-existence, but of all that was implied in the possession of the Divine incommunicable name of JEHOVAH. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I AM." Not "I was," but "I AM"--the Great Underived, whose lifetime is Eternity--that Eternity comprehending a dateless past--a changeless present--a limitless future--ever living in the sublime consciousness of His own Being. From Everlasting to Everlasting--the same!\par \par Again, at the Feast, of dedication in winter, when walking in Solomon's porch, He was interrogated by the same skeptic auditory as to His pretensions. While declaring His prerogative to confer on His sheep the gift of eternal life, He concludes with the assertion, "I and My Father are one." The Jews present had not misapprehended His meaning. They viewed it as being "blasphemous." On remonstrating with them for their threat to stone Him, their reply was, "For a good work we stone You not, but for blasphemy; and because that -You being a man make Yourself God." Doubtless He would have disclaimed and corrected their impressions had He considered them erroneous. So far from this, however, He only adds confirmation to His previous testimony. "If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do, though you believe not Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him." "All things are delivered unto Me of My Father, and no man knows the Son but the Father; neither knows any man. the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." "My Father," He again says, "works hitherto, and I work"--anew, explicitly claiming coequal power and parity of working in nature and providence with the Eternal Father. Could there be such an assumption of jurisdiction, identifying and associating Himself as One with the Supreme Maker and Sustainer, "the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, who faints not, neither is weary," if He were not divine?\par \pa/r If there was any locality or object more than another associated to the Jew with deepest sacredness, it was his Temple. The Temple!--the former abode of the Shekinah, the visible dwelling-place of deity. Hear how the divine Redeemer speaks of Himself in presence of Jews, and under the very shadow of the imposing temple--"Verily I say unto you, that in this place is One greater than the Temple."\par \par Listen to some of His last divine utterances, when, in the words of the beloved ev0angelist, "knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God, and went to God" "I am in the Father, and the Father in Me." "He that has seen Me has seen the Father." How strange would the assertion have been (on the supposition of mere creatureship), when He speaks of the boon of His indwelling presence, as being of equal value and preciousness with that of the Father! Had the vast interval existed which must always sever the holiest created from the Uncreated, wou1ld not His language rather have been this--'I, your Lord and Master, will dwell with you; but the boon of My indwelling will be nothing to the Greater presence of the Supreme God'? But what says He?--"If a man loves Me, he will keep My words--and My Father will love him, and WE will come unto him, and make OUR abode with him."\par \par His sublime intercessory prayer is an indirect, but continuous attestation to the same great truth. What striking and remarkable words these were, in connection w2ith the time He uttered them! They were the words, not of a conqueror, but of, apparently, a doomed man, one about to die. Yet, how the halo of Deity seems to encircle His devoted head, as He speaks--"And now, O Father, glorify Me with Your own self with the glory which I had with You before the world was." "All Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I am glorified in them." "Holy Father, keep through Your own name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one, as We are." "That they all may be one;3 as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You." "I have declared unto them Your name, and will declare it; that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them." His works are the works of God; His will is the will of God; His glory is the glory of God. To dishonor the Father is to dishonor Him. To love the Father is to love Him. "Could we have heard Him forgiving sins; asserting His right to do so; summoning the world to yield up its heart to Him; to make its homage to the Father a pattern4 of its homage to Him; could we have heard this without feeling that God must be present in the person of the mysterious Speaker; that the throne of deity must be, in a sense, come from heaven to earth?" (Harris' Great Teacher)\par \par When His work is finished, and He is on the eve of leaving this world, He departs, asserting and claiming the attribute of omnipotence--"All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth." When He returns to the beloved disciple in Patmos, as "one like unto the S5on of man" in His glorified humanity, He wears the unmistakable symbols of deity--"His head and His hair are white, like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes are as a flame of fire." He rides triumphantly in vision through the heavens, having on His vesture, and on His thigh, a name written, "King of kings, and Lord of lords;" while these are some of His sublime utterances to the trembling and awestruck worshiper, regarding His omniscience, His eternity, and His power--"These things says the Son of God, w6ho has His eyes like unto a flame of fire, 'I am He that searches the reins and hearts.'" "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, says the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come--the Almighty."\par \par And once more, carrying our thoughts onwards, to the consummation of all things--the end of His mediatorial reign over the Church militant--in one of His most sublime parables, He claims the dignity of Supreme judge of mankind at the great assize, "When the Son of man shall co7me in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory. And before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."\par \par To the same effect He d8eclares in John, "For as the Father raises up the dead, and quickens them; even so the Son quickens whom He will. For the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father." "It is not incredible that God should raise the dead; but it is absolutely incredible that any other being should." (Dr. Pye Smith.)\par \par In looking forward to that Day, when the Almighty "shall judge the world in righteousness by that Man 9whom He has ordained," do we ever think of what is implied and involved in the complex, superhuman task of being Judge of all? It assuredly demands the possession of qualifications centering in One, 'to whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden;' who, with unchallenged supremacy and discriminating wisdom, which Omniscience alone possesses, can weigh all the thoughts and purposes, the motives and actions, the subtle springs of conduct, the extenuating circumstances in :each individual case and life; and that too extending over countless millions of souls--whole centuries thronged with living and accountable beings; none able to resist His might, or to evade His scrutiny. What created power, what angel or archangel from the ranks of loftiest intelligence, could undertake such a judgement as this? Who but the Great Being who sways the scepter of universal empire--in other words, JEHOVAH--could claim and challenge such peerless prerogatives? "Our GOD shall come, and shall ;not keep silence. He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people."\par \par Such are some of the Savior's own declarations regarding His Divine claims.\par \par Before proceeding, as proposed, to gather some of the more important attestations of the inspired writers to the great truth, it may be well for a little to advert, from the early place they occupy in Old Testament story, to those indirect but still remarkable testimonies, known as "TheoJEHOVAH, as the Hebrew word means) appeared to him. "He lift up his eyes," we read, "and looked, and lo! three men stood by him; and he bowed himself toward the ground," in customary obeisance. Though in angelic form like the others who accompanied Him, we are left in no doubt as to the superior and preeminent dignity of one of these three. Two of the heavenly messengers, after partaking of a patriarchal meal, withdrew on their mission to Sodom. The third, however, tarried with the patriarch. But of Him w?e read, "And the Lord (JEHOVAH) said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" "Abraham stood yet before JEHOVAH." "Behold now," says the Father of the Faithful, "I have taken upon me to speak unto THE LORD, who am but dust and ashes." And again, "Shall not THE JUDGE OF ALL THE EARTH do right?" And then we read, "The Lord (JEHOVAH) went His way."\par \par We find the same Angel appearing to Jacob in a dream, and reminding him thus of the most memorable hour of his earlier history, when @in visions of the night, above his stony pillow at Bethel, troops of angels seemed to line a celestial ladder; and a voice, more magnificent and divine than that of angels, addressed the wanderer from the heights of heaven, "I am the GOD of Bethel, where you anointed the pillar, and where you vowed a vow unto me." At a future crisis-hour, He revealed Himself to the patriarch at Peniel, where "there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." That mighty Wrestler changed the name of the PilgrimA-Father from Jacob to Israel; and He assigned as the reason, "For as a prince have you power with GOD and with men, and have prevailed. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen GOD face to face, and my life is preserved." That incident, with its sacred recollections, years on years afterwards, rose up before the dimming eye of aged Israel, as on his deathbed he summoned Joseph and his two sons to impart to them the farewell blessing. Thus does he advert to that mysterious personage aBt Jabbok, "GOD, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the GOD which fed me all my life long unto this day, the ANGEL which redeemed me from all evil." The Prophet Hosea adds this comment on the same memorable occurrence in the life of Jacob--"By his strength he had power with GOD--yes, he had power over the Angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication unto Him--he found Him in Bethel, and there He spoke with us; even THE LORD GOD OF HOSTS; The Lord is his memorial." Observe, this majeCstic Being, who first appeared in the gloom of that midnight hour as a man, is here designated not even an incarnate angel, but as "God," and "THE LORD GOD OF HOSTS."\par \par Passing to the next era in Israel's history. To a careful reader of the whole story of the Exodus, and the wanderings, it will be manifest that the divine Being who preceded the camp, by day in a pillar of cloud and at night in a pillar of fire, was none other than this same Covenant-Angel of the patriarchal Church. Out ofD the midst of the flaming bush it was the Angel JEHOVAH who spoke to Moses, and gave him his commission to the court of Pharaoh. That bush was itself a significant symbol of the twofold nature of the promised Redeemer--not a giant cedar or graceful palm, but a stunted desert tree, "a root out of a dry ground, having neither form nor loveliness." Yet glorious as an emblem of Deity--for "the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed." Moses said, "I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, Ewhy the bush is not burnt. And when THE LORD (JEHOVAH) saw that he turned aside to see, GOD called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon GOD. And THE LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt (for I know their sorrows); and I have come down to deliver them, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land."\par \pFar But how, it may be asked, are we authorised to identify the God who spoke here to Moses, with the Covenant-Angel, the Lord Jesus Christ? If we turn to the Acts of the Apostles, and read the historical defense of Stephen before the Jewish Sanhedrin, we shall find the first Christian martyr thus referring to the same incident. "There appeared to Moses, in the wilderness of Sinai, an Angel of the Lord in a flame of fire;" and again, "Moses was in the church in the wilderness with the Angel, whichG spoke to him in the Mount Sinai." It is plain from these passages, taken in connection, that the living God--the JEHOVAH of the burning bush, and "the Angel (of) THE LORD"--are one and the same; moreover, that this Covenant-Angel announces as His purpose not only to deliver Israel, but by His personal guidance to conduct them to Canaan--"I will bring them up out of that land to a good land." So that all the subsequent manifestations of divine power in that unparalleled march--the rebuking of the Red Sea,H the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, the final dividing the waters of the Jordan, were the doings of Him who, in answer to the interrogation of Moses as to the name and authority of their august Deliverer, replied, "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM. Thus shall you say unto the children of Israel, I AM has sent me unto you." Blessed testimony! that the Angel of the pillar-cloud--the eternal God, who thus declares His ineffable name "I AM"--whose chariots, as described by the Psalmist, were "twentyI thousand, even thousands of angels in Sinai, in the holy place;" before whom "the earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God, even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, "the God of Israel;" is the very Savior of whom another thus speaks, in reference to that same great epoch in Israel's history--"In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them, and He bare them and carried them all the days of old.J"\par \par Our limits forbid tracing, with any minuteness, the references to this Covenant-Angel on other occasions and periods throughout the theocracy. We need only allude, without comment, to the familiar instances of His appearances to Hagar, who named the place where the angel of God called to her out of heaven, "God, You see me"--to Joshua, as "the Captain of the Lord's host"--to Gideon, at his wine-press, when the names "God," and "Angel of God," given to the mysterious visitant, are alsoK significantly interchanged--to Manoah, who dreads instant death from seeing "the Angel of the Lord" face to face--that Angel subsequently revealing his name as "Wonderful" or "Secret" to Zechariah, "as presiding over the affairs of the world; directing the ministrations of superior intelligences; protecting, vindicating, and interceding for the oppressed Jewish Church; the Messiah, the Savior, the Priest upon His throne, the Intercessor; and not less certainly described as possessing the attributes, exerLcising the sovereignty, and wearing the holy and incommunicable name of Jehovah."\par \par Who else, in these varied cases can this be, but the divine Redeemer anticipating His incarnation--Jehovah in very deed dwelling with man upon the earth--a few favored members of redeemed humanity permitted to entertain, not angels, but the God of angels at unawares?\par \par But it is time we now hasten to gather a few of the more prominent testimonies to the divinity of our Blessed Lord, furnisMhed by the inspired penmen alike of Old and New Testament Scripture.\par \par Among many Old Testament assertions, we may begin with that remarkable passage in the Book of Proverbs, where Incarnate WISDOM is represented as speaking of His own eternal subsistence with the Father; dwelling alone with Him in the yet unpeopled solitudes of Immensity, before throngs of worlds and intelligences had occupied space. Who can read the following sublime passage, and resolve the Divine Being there describedN, as hostile critics would do, into an Eastern metaphor or poetic impersonation? "Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled; before the hills was I brought forth--while as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. OWhen He prepared the heavens, I was there--when He set a compass upon the face of the depth--when He established the clouds above--when He strengthened the fountains of the deep--when He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment--when He appointed the foundations of the earth--Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him--and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him." (Prov. 8:22-30.)\par \par Passing to that which is known peculiarly as the 'prophePtical era,' let us listen to the strains of the evangelical Prophet. While he speaks, in one sentence (respecting the future Incarnation,) of "the Child born" and the "Son given;" he adds, "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father" (margin, 'the Father of Eternity'). Again, "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His name IMMANUEL, (which, being interpreted, is God with us"). It was this adorable Immanuel--Christ as God--whom the same PrQophet beheld in magnificent vision--"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple." He describes the seraphim with veiled wings crying one to another, "'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory,' and the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke." And then the awestruck prophet is represented as exclaiming, "Woe is me! for I am undone, fRor my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." The inference that this "Jehovah of Hosts," to whom the seraphim bend in lowly adoration, is the Lord Jesus Christ, is no gratuitous assumption. Appealing to the Gospels as our authority, we there find the apostle John, after quoting the passage, making the distinct declaration--"These things said Isaiah when he saw His (Christ's) glory, and spoke of Him."\par \par Listen to the testimony of Jeremiah, "Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that SI will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely, and this is the name whereby He shall be called, JEHOVAH our Righteousness." Zechariah, in a verse of sublime but terrific poetry, represents the sword of justice as awaking from its scabbard to "smite the Shepherd." But to that Shepherd is applied the term, 'Equal of the Lord of Hosts,' "the man who is my FellTow." Hear the testimony of one of the minor prophets--that most interesting and comprehensive of Old Testament predictions which Micah gives regarding the Person of Christ, embracing alike His divine and human nature. While pointing to Bethlehem-Ephrathah as the honored birth-place of the incarnate Son, in language whose meaning can admit of no doubtful interpretation, he proclaims, in the same breath, His eternal existence--"But you, Bethlehem-Ephrathah, though you be little among the thousands of Judah,U yet out of you shall He come forth that is to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting."--(Marginal reading "from the days of eternity").\par \par We may close these emphatic attestations with the striking words of Malachi, who seals up the Old Testament vision--"Behold, I will send My Messenger, and He shall prepare the way before Me--and JEHOVAH, whom you seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom you delight in, sayVs the Lord of Hosts." In this concluding prophecy, the promised Messiah is again brought before us as the Covenant-Angel--the Angel of the old Theophanies; the same divine, mysterious Being who, at the dawn of the Mosaic dispensation, announced Himself as the "I AM," "the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob."\par \par We proceed from the Prophecies to the Psalms. Many of these in their literal--most of them in their secondary meaning--refer to Christ--not a few form an ascription of praise to theW Messiah-King in His supreme divinity. To attempt even an enumeration of such would be quite beyond our limits. We must restrict ourselves to three, in which special and undoubted references to the Redeemer are made by writers in the New Testament.\par \par The first of these is the application by the Apostle Paul (in Eph. 4:8) of a verse in the 68th Psalm--"Wherefore, He says, when He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." Now, it would be obviously doing violeXnce to all principles of fair interpretation, forcibly to isolate this verse from the preceding and following context, so as to make it stand alone in its reference to Messiah, and regard the rest of the psalm as alluding to another. If this verse speaks of Christ, it is only reasonable to apply all the other portions to Him. Let us hear, then, the ascription to this same majestic Being, with which the sublime "Song of Victory" alike opens and closes. "Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered--let themY also that hate Him flee before Him." "Sing unto God, sing praises to His name--extol Him that rides upon the heavens by His name JAH, and rejoice before Him." "Sing unto God, you kingdoms of the earth; O sing praises unto the Lord--To Him that rides upon the heavens of heavens, which were of old--lo, He does send out His voice, and that a mighty voice. Ascribe you strength unto God--His excellency is over Israel, and His strength is in the clouds. O God, You are glorious out of Your holy places--the God Zof Israel is He that gives strength and power unto His people. Blessed be God."\par \par A second proof, gleaned from the same ample storehouse, is in the Pauline reference to that grand oration which closes the 102d Psalm. If there be an allusion, as unquestionably there is, in the first instance, to the individual case of the inspired penman (conjectured to be some pious Israelite at the era of the Babylonish captivity, bewailing alike his personal afflictions and those of the Church of God), [there is doubtless throughout the psalm a secondary reference to a Greater. We have a foreshadowing alike of the true Humanity and true Deity of the world's coming Redeemer. There is the wail of the suffering Man, in conjunction with the majesty of the everlasting God. In the verse of the psalm immediately preceding the apostle's quotation, we listen to the prayer of the Sufferer, the appeal of the Savior's sinking human nature to His Father--"He weakened My strength in the way; He shortened My days. I sa\id, O My God, take Me not away in the midst of My days." The reply of the Father follows. It is the sublime assertion of the supreme Godhead of His divine Son, as the unchanging and everlasting--"Your years are throughout all generations. Of old have You laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They shall perish, but You shall endure; yes, all of them shall wax old like a garment--as a vesture shall You change them, and they shall be changed--but You are the same, and ]Your years shall have no end."\par \par One other similar proof from the Psalter, is that, for which (in applying it to Christ), we have the express authority of the same apostle in the opening chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is contained in the 45th Psalm; in which the writer speaks of the things "touching the King;" and indites, in glowing metaphor, a royal "wedding song,"--on the bridal day of Messiah with the Church, His betrothed spouse. While with reference to the humanity of the^ "mighty One," he speaks of Him as full of grace, "fairer than the children of men," having "grace poured into His lips;" he proceeds immediately to celebrate the glories of His deity in language of reverential homage and adoration, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever!"\par \par At the risk of breaking the continuity of the subject, we shall reserve the remainder of the proof for next chapter. What has been already advanced, indeed, independent of other testimony, might well lead us to repo_se in calm confidence in this majestic 'Cleft of the Rock;' and to appropriate with unwavering trust, as alike the foundation article and the crown and consummation of our faith, the opening invocation of the noble Hymn of the ancient church; (are we wrong in saying the grandest uninspired Hymn ever penned?) "We praise YOU, GOD!" \par \par \par \par \par THE DEITY OF CHRIST (part 2)\par \par "The Word was God."--John 1:1\par \par "That Christ is truly God is manifestly de`clared, in that Paul attributes the same things equally unto Him, which he does unto the Father, that is, divine power, as the giving of grace, the forgiveness of sins, peace of conscience, life, victory over sin, death, the devil, and hell. Now to give grace, peace, everlasting life; to forgive sins, to make righteous, to quicken, to deliver from death and the devil, are not the works of any creature, but of the Divine Majesty alone. The angels can neither create, nor give these things. Therefore these waorks pertain only to the glory of the Sovereign Majesty--the Maker of all things. It must needs follow that Christ is truly and naturally God." \endash Luther.\par \par In the preceding chapter, a rapid survey has been taken of the more important scripture attestations (and more especially those contained in the Old Testament), to the supreme Godhead of the Redeemer.\par \par We proceed to complete the proof, by referring to a few of the leading assertions of the inspired writers in thbe New Testament, in support of the same cardinal truth of the Christian system. We must refer the reader, who wishes more minutely to prosecute inquiry, to those ampler treatises compiled by masters in Israel, wherein the faith of the Church in the Divinity of her Lord has been nobly vindicated.\par \par To begin with testimonies contained in the GOSPELS. We shall not attempt to enter on the proof from miracles; although to these, our blessed Lord Himself pointed, as special attestations to His cdivine mission. When the Baptist sent some of his own disciples from the prison of Machaerus with the query, "Are You He that should come, or do we look for another?" what was the Savior's reply? With what proofs did He confirm and authenticate His Messiahship in the eyes of these wavering and misgiving followers? He stretched forth His hands on the surrounding groups stricken with sin and suffering--the palsied with their tottering limbs--the blind with their sealed eyes--the fever-stricken with their budrning lips--the demon-possessed with their wild and vacant stare--"He healed them ALL;" and then, pointing the messengers to the masses thus restored by His omnipotent touch and word--the closed eye opening to the light of day--the halting cripple leaping with joy--the dull ear of the deaf unstopped--the fevered couch emptied of its tenant--the wild raving maniac led gently as a child--"Go," said He, "Go your way, and tell John what you have seen and heard."\par \par Let us, however, rather resterict ourselves to a few of the direct statements contained in the Gospels and Epistles.\par \par We may begin with another testimony of that same great Forerunner to whom we have just alluded. "John bore witness of Him, and cried saying, This was He of whom I spoke, He that comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me. He must increase, but I must decrease. He that comes from above is above all."\par \par More explicit still is the witness of the other John. When he wrotfe his Gospel, the venerable Saint of Ephesus was the last survivor of the apostolic band. Well might the eagle, with its strength of wing and soaring flight, be deemed by the early Christians his most appropriate emblem--reaching, as he did, altitudes attained by no other in the regions of uncreated light and glory, as if basking in the very beams of the unveiled Sun of Righteousness! "Impatient," says Augustine, "of setting his foot on the earth, he rises, from the very first words of his Gospel, not onlgy above earth and the span of air and sky, but above all angels and invisible powers, until he reaches Him by whom all things were made." Surely if there had been no other proof in Scripture, this sublime epitome of the teachings of the favored apostle (part of which heads this and the former chapter), would of itself suffice to settle the question--"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and withhout Him was not anything made that was made."\par \par What language could be more forcible or conclusive? "This passage," to take the testimony of Griesbach among those of a hundred scholars, "is so clear and so superior to all exception, that by no daring efforts of either commentators or critics can it ever be overturned, or be snatched out of the hands of the defenders of the truth." There is, in these utterances of the beloved Disciple, nothing figurative--nothing parabolic. They consist ofi a series of simple propositions--the articles of a creed, which John, in an age when heresy was rampant, left as a sacred legacy to the Church of the future as to the supreme divinity of the Incarnate Word--the "Image of the Invisible God."\par \par But we cannot linger on the testimonies of the Gospels. Eliminate from these the fact of His absolute Deity, and they become incomprehensible. You try to quench the radiance which beams out on every page. As it has been well said, "Reduce Him to a mjere teacher like Plato, or a Prophet like Isaiah, and it is as if the Gospels were emptied of their meaning. The very substance of the doctrine is gone--the teaching of Jesus is little more but a tinkling cymbal. All that sublime mystery which has nourished the souls of saints in all time, is then rightly pronounced the most defective portion of His teaching. If He is not God, the divinest side of His doctrine becomes the most vulnerable. It can only subsist, if beneath the formulas is felt the throb of ak life which is truly of God."\par \par Passing from the Gospels to the EPISTLES. Although not directly a proof of absolute Godhead, let us begin with Paul's assertion, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might be rich." "Though rich"--what could this mean on the supposition that Christ was a mere man? His lowly birth--His manger cradle--the carpenter's home at Nazareth--all these render the reflerence surely to His "riches" inappropriate. He was, in earthly condition, the poorest of the poor; a Galilean peasant; who had at times not where to lay His head! Moreover, on the supposition of mere manhood, how could there be "grace" manifested by Him in assuming our nature? Where would be the condescension in a man taking upon him the common garb of humanity? The whole force of the apostle's words is lost on such an hypothesis. But take the true view of this noble passage. Regard the writer as speakinmg of the mighty stoop of Infinite Godhead, and all becomes plain!\par \par We may select as our next reference, that contained in the same Apostle's Epistle to the Philippians, in which he clearly and indubitably claims for Christ the possession of a nature and perfections immeasurably superior to the most exalted and glorious of dependent existences--in other words DIVINE. "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God." "God also has highly exalted Him, and given Hinm a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."\par \par Stronger and more emphatic still is the Apostle's language in another sublime passage, where he anticipates the very heresies of later centuries, and controverts the erroneous views of those who would assign to Christ no more than an exaltoed place in the ranks of creatureship, making Him 'an inferior workman, creating for the glory of a higher Master--for a God superior to Himself'--a passive instrument rather than an original and originating agent. He vindicates His dignity and glory as Lord, 'in His creative power, His eternal existence, His heirship over the universe--that universe, the theater on which He is to accomplish His purposes and display His perfections\'85ascribing to Him, therefore, infinite power, infinite wisdom.' "Who is pthe image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers--all things were created by Him and for Him and He is before all things, and by Him all things are held together."\par \par It has been well observed, that "while the Epistle to the Hebrews lays almost more emphasis than any other book of the New Testament upon Christ'qs true humanity, it is nevertheless certain that no other book more implicitly asserts the reality of His divine prerogatives." Let us listen to the impressive exordium--"God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds, Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and UPHOLDING all things by the word of His power,r when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; being made so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For to which of the angels said He at any time, You are My Son, today have I begotten You? And again, I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to me a Son? And again, when He brings in the first-begotten into the world He says, And let all the angels of God worship Him. And of the angels He (only) says, Wsho makes His angels spirits, and His ministers a flaming fire. But unto the Son, He says, Your throne, O GOD, is forever and ever."\par \par We have already listened to the apostle John in the opening of his Gospel. Let us now hear the same honored disciple in the opening of his Epistles. We may repeat the introductory words--"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life. (For tthe life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.)" Again, "And we know that the Son of God is come, and has given us an understanding that we might know Him that is true; and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and (the) eternal life."\par \par Another indirect class of evidences is furnished conjointly, by passages, contained in gospels and epistlues, in which adoration is rendered to Christ. We know that worship or adoration is given to God alone. We know, moreover, from various statements in the Old Testament, how jealous the Divine Being is of giving His glory to another. "It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve." When John, also, fell at the feet of the angel, and was about to render him an act of homage, he was rebuked by the words, "Do not worship me. \'85worship God." The very fact, therefore, of the vSon having adoration ascribed to Him, forms surely the strongest testimony, that not only is He higher than any angelic being, but has a title to deity itself. We have already heard our blessed Lord Himself claiming the prerogative, "That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father." "That at the name of Jesus," says the Apostle, "every knee should bow." More than once in the apostolic benedictions, He is put on an equality with the Father, as if entitled to receive parity of homage--"The wgrace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit." And if we pass from the Church militant to the Church triumphant in heaven, described in the Book of Revelation; as an appropriate close to all, we listen to the divine ascription of the "ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing." No testimony or tribute to xthe Savior's supreme Divinity can go beyond this, in its impressiveness and sublimity. We behold, in wondrous vision, concentric circles of worshipers in the upper sanctuary--"angels, living ones, and elders." They are represented as gathered, in devoutest adoration, around a slain and wounded Lamb, gazing on these mysterious symbols of suffering in a place where suffering is unknown--The Rock of Ages furrowed with mysterious clefts and crevices! From one of these circles (the inner favored group of redeeymed humanity), there comes the ascription which they alone are qualified to utter, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain." But the key-note thus struck by the white-robed band, is taken up by teeming myriads, reaching to the outskirts of illimitable space. All creation becomes vocal with the hymn to the same enthroned Lamb, once more associated and identified with the Supreme God--"And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in thzem, heard I saying, Blessing and honor and glory and power, be unto Him that sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever. And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four-and-twenty elders fell down and worshiped Him that lives forever and ever." "And the four living ones said, Amen. And the four-and-twenty elders fell down and worshiped HIM THAT LIVES FOREVER AND EVER."\par \par Such then, briefly and imperfectly summarized, are some of the leading scriptural attestations to the Savior{'s Divinity; and we would say to all readers on the retrospect, "As wise men, judge." Are we prepared to bow with reverence before Him, and to say in words of more emphatic adhesion and acknowledgment than those of Nathaniel, "Rabbi, You are the Son of God, You are the King of Israel?" or, like one who loved Him as her son, but adored Him as her God--"My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior? or with the once doubting, but now convinced and believing Thomas--"My Lord and my God?" Let us seek to grasp and r|ealize the full grandeur of this Truth of truths; to have it more frequently before us as a subject of devout contemplation--that the Christ of Nazareth, the Savior of Calvary--He who bled for me as Man upon the cross, and pleads for me on the throne, is the Mighty Jehovah; that He was before all things; that He reared every arch and pillar in the Universe Temple. "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who has created these things, that brings out their host by number--He calls them all by their names." B}efore these stars were made, before these altar-fires were lighted in immensity, before man or angel or seraph, throne or dominion or principality or power existed, this all-glorious Being lived--one in essence and substance with the Eternal Father.\par \par Any lowlier view of the nature and dignity of Christ would not suffice. It would be like blotting out the sun from these visible heavens to attempt to erase the supreme divinity of Jesus from the creed of Christendom. No angel, no creature c~ould save me. The incarnation of the highest archangel before the throne, and his voluntary substitution as a sacrificial offering for my sins, would be a simple impossibility. No creature of God can atone for the sin of a fellow creature. The fact of creatureship would vitiate the work of such a surety. As a creature, though the loftiest and purest, his life is not his own. He is himself a pensioner on God's bounty. In dying for me, and forfeiting his life, he would be forfeiting that which was not his to give.\par \par Add to this, if Christ be no more than the first and most exalted of angels, He would necessarily be devoid of the attributes and prerogatives of Deity. Divest Him of these, and how dwarfed and limited immediately become His capabilities, alike as Intercessor and King. If a mere creature, even though on the pinnacles of creature-being, how could He be omnipresent with His Church? He could listen afar, so to speak, to the hum of the world's swarming population, as we do from window or balcony, on some great festal occasion, to the multitudinous voices--'the loud stunning tide' of the surging throng beneath, without being able to catch or discriminate one articulate utterance.\par \par But He must be God--He must have the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience, to enter into every separate home and take cognizance of every separate heart, and have an ear for the music of every separate prayer, and a hand to wipe every falling tear. As our Great High Priest on the throne, He is said to wear the breastplate gleaming with the names of all His covenant Israel. But how could He thus bear them, in the sense of knowing each individual name, if that heart of His did not throb with the pulses of Deity? How could He control the destinies of the Church and of the world if "all power" had not been His of right? How could He be "unchangeable" if His own will and purposes were dependent on a Higher? Christ a mere man! Then what a mockery to say to slumbering millions, "Awake, you that sheep, and arise from the dead, and CHRIST shall give you life." Oh, if He be but a creature, though the highest in rank in the heavenly peerage, I cannot confide to Him my eternal destinies. If He who bowed His head on that cross be a mere man and no more, I cannot look to Him as the Rock of Ages! A creature! as well pillow my head on the unstable wave. But blessed be God, I can plant my foot upon the living Rock of His deity. I can trust in Him, not as a prince, or as the son of man, in whom there would be no stay--but I can "trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is THE ROCK OF AGES." Invoking Him as such, I can with devout confidence of a gracious answer, join in the prayer, "O GOD the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!"\par \par Indeed, independent of the imperative need of Deity to qualify Him to be a complete Savior, we cannot read the record of His own wondrous life, without seeing in it the element of supporting Godhead. What but Deity could have upheld Him in His own trial hour? Look at His temptations in the wilderness and the garden! What but the Rock of His Godhead could have stood, as wave after wave rolled against it? Adam was a pure and glorious creature. But when these same billows swept over him, he was borne away like a reed on the waters. Satan was once a pure and glorious creature (supposed to have been at the head of all created intelligences), a chieftain and lord amid principalities and powers. The billows of temptation in his case, also, came--he was driven with his legions down into the fathomless abyss. If Christ had been only a creature, how can we dare predicate of Him that He could have better withstood the assaults of evil? But as these crested breakers surged against 'the Rock,' we know how they receded, chafed and buffeted. The Prince of this world came and had nothing in Him!\par \par Reader, enter this glorious Cleft! Come, adore the mystery of godliness, "God manifest in the flesh"--the Divine Being who created by His word--who sustains by His providence--who, as the God-man, redeems with His blood. Come, contemplate His nativity, with its mystic star and shining hosts of angels, the silence of night made vocal with celestial song. Come, behold His wondrous works. See, as we have just been beholding, sickness taking wings at His word. See demons crouching rebuked in His presence, and yielding reluctant admission to His claims. See Him reading the inmost thoughts of an outcast sinner at the well of Samaria. See Him claiming power to forgive sin by the palsied couch at Capernaum. See the waves of His own Gennesaret having their turmoil quelled--rocking themselves to rest at His omnipotent "Peace be still." See Death casting his iron crown at the feet of the Lord of life--its fettered Victim bursting the bands that swathed him.\par \par Does the Socinian say, Who but man could shed these tears at Bethany? Yes, we reply, but who, save God, could speak these words, "Lazarus, come forth!" Come to the cross of Calvary. See the sun hiding his face at the death-throes of his Almighty Maker, and earth heaving convulsive to her core! See the mysterious Sufferer encircling with a halo of glory the brows of a dying malefactor, and in the hour of His own deepest humiliation, opening the gates of Paradise to the vilest and most miserable of sinners! Come to His own grave, the sepulcher at Golgotha--behold the crowning proof of His divinity, when "declared to be the Son of God with power, by His resurrection from the dead." See Him standing as the God-man with His vacant sepulcher behind Him--with all the chains and bonds and missiles of Satan, meant for His destruction, now gathered as trophies of victory. Come, see the pictures drawn of His future universal reign, by psalmists and prophets--"the Great jubilee of pardoned humanity," when welcomed as Prince of Peace, King of kings and Lord of lords, to the throne of universal empire--Midian, Ephah and Sheba--(the Bedouins of the desert--the children of the far east), hastening on dromedaries with their gold and incense--the ships of Tarshish, the symbols of the civilization of the west, bounding over the waves with their costly offerings of fidelity and adoration. The glory of Lebanon on the north, and of Ethiopia in the south, is laid tributary at His feet--the wealth of the material creation, beautifying and adorning the place of His sanctuary--His dominion extending "from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth."\par \par That dominion secures deliverance, redemption, peace--the numbers of His spiritual adherents--the members of His Church, are likened to doves flying to their windows--flocks of living souls, "whose wings are covered with silver, and their feathers with yellow gold," speeding for shelter and repose into the clefts of this mighty ROCK--and yet room for all! See kings and princes casting their crowns and scepters before Him, esteeming it an honor to be servants and vassals of a Mightier--His name enduring forever--continuing long as the sun--"the whole earth filled with His glory" the voice of a great multitude heard in heaven--increasing until it is like the voice of many waters--deepening into the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, "Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigns."\par \par And then, as the Drama of Time is in the act of closing, behold Him coming "with clouds" (clouds, the invariable symbol and emblem of deity,) every eye seeing Him--behold Him seated "as the Ancient of Days"--His garment "white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure wool,"--His throne like the fiery flame, and wheels as burning fire; thousand thousands ministering to Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand standing before Him. Yes! let the Unitarian take His Gospel without Godhead in it--let Infidelity attempt to reduce the Person and mission of the adorable Immanuel to that of the mere Founder of a new system of divine philosophy, a new Head of a religious school--be it ours to pay a nobler and truer homage to Him who is unveiled to us in sacred story as "the Word," "the Life," "the Light," "the Truth," "the Omnipresent," "the Heart-searcher," the "Beginning and the ending," the Creator of worlds, the Redeemer of souls--the Wonderful--the Adored of angels--the appointed judge--the enthroned King--the I AM of eternal ages! Be it ours to testify that the struggles and toils of 1800 years have not been made, to defend and vindicate a monstrous delusion--that thousands of crowned martyrs now in heaven have not shed their blood to uphold a lie. Be it ours to see in Him, the Creator who has plenished the universe with worlds--the glory of illimitable Godhead enshrined in a human tabernacle--aye, and better still, be it ours to be able to say in reverential faith, as we fall adoring at His feet, "This God shall be our God forever and ever!"\par \par We would only imitate the example of the Psalmist, and in conclusion, call upon all creation to rise and do homage to this its Incarnate Maker. Praise Him in the heavens! Praise Him in the heights. 'O Sun of this great world, both eye and soul,' reflect His glory! Moon! take your silver lyre--strike your harp in the praise of your God! Stars, gather your brilliant gems as a coronal for His brow! Floods, rise and thunder forth His praise. Every flower that blooms, come and waft your fragrance around the rose of Sharon. Lisping infancy, come with your Hosannahs. Penitence, come bathed in tears. Sorrow, come in the extremity of anguish to this Divine Sympathizer, this living God yet your Brother. Youth, come with your green ears of consecration. Manhood, come in your strength. Old age, come leaning on your staff. Come, saints and prophets of olden time! Come, noble army of martyrs! Come, you heavenly hosts! cherubim and seraphim, gather in to the universal homage! Let the Church triumphant echo back the strains of "the Church throughout all the world"--"YOU ARE THE KING OF GLORY, O CHRIST--YOU ARE THE EVERLASTING SON OF THE FATHER!"\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } .2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST\par \par "So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us." John 1:14\par \par "The Word of God, Jesus Christ, on account of His immense love, became what we are, that He might make us what He is." \endash Irenaeus, 169.\par \par "There is no room in the inn for the Child miraculously born--the earth does not receive its God. He has no suitable dwelling-place in all the world. He whom heaven and earth cannot contain, lies in a manger!" \endash Simon de Cassia.\par \par "If Jesus were God only, and not man, He could not suffer anything whereby to satisfy Divine Justice. If man only, and not God, He could not satisfy Divine Justice, even though He suffered. If man only, His satisfaction could not be sufficient for God. If God only, it would not be suitable for man. And, therefore, to be capable of suffering for men, and able to satisfy God, Himself must be both God and man." \endash Bishop Beveridge.\par \par "The one true and perfect Flower which has ever unfolded itself out of the root and stalk of humanity." \endash Trench.\par \par In the previous chapters; the endeavor was made, as fully as our limits would admit, to adduce scriptural proof in support of that foundation-article of our most holy faith, the supreme divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ--"The Word was GOD." Let us, with a similar devout and reverential spirit, now turn our thoughts to another great cleft in the Rock of Ages, the correlative doctrine of the Savior's Humanity; when (adopting the translation or paraphrase of the apostle's words, made by an exegetical writer of the fifth century), "hiding His own dignity, He took the condition of extreme humiliation, and clothed Himself in the human form."\par \par "So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us!" What a transition! What a stoop for that Infinite Being whom we found proclaiming Himself the Alpha and the Omega, writing His name on the Palace-walls of Eternity, "I AM THAT I AM!" for "The Ancient of days" to assume the nature and take the form of a cradled infant, sleeping on a virgin mother's breast!--the Plant of heavenly renown to become "a root out of a dry ground," without beauty or loveliness! We have no plumb-line to sound the depths of that humiliation--no arithmetic by which it can be submitted to any process of calculation. To use an illustration, which has been pertinently employed; if we can entertain for a moment the startling supposition of the loftiest created spirit in heaven abjuring his angel-nature, and (suddenly metamorphosed,) becoming an insect or a worm, we can, in some feeble degree, estimate the descent involved in the transformation. But, however great the disparity, they are both creatures of God, though at the opposites of being.\par \par But, for the Illimitable, Everlasting Jehovah, Himself to become incarnate; the Creator to take the nature of the created; the Infinite to be joined with the finite; Deity to be linked with dust--this baffles all our comprehension! We can only lie in adoring reverence, and exclaim with the apostle, "O the depth!"\par \par If such an idea had been suggested to reason, how it would have been rejected as impossible and inadmissible, a wild and unwarrantable dream of imagination. What we have to deal with, however, is not a matter of vague theory or speculation, but a marvelous historic fact; for, "Wonder, O heavens, and be astonished, O earth," God has "in very deed dwelt with men on the earth!"\par \par We shall not consider it necessary to occupy space in quoting passages of Scripture in proof of the Savior's Humanity; for the present is not (in our days at least), like the theme of last chapter, a disputed, controverted one--a keenly contested question in polemical divinity, demanding that we sift scripture by scripture, text by text, in vindicating and defending it. Assuming its truth, let us proceed to offer a few general remarks, on the nature of that humanity which the adorable Redeemer took into union with His Godhead.\par \par I. It was a REAL Humanity. Notwithstanding what has just been said, as to the general acceptance, in the present age of the Church, of orthodox views on the subject of this great collateral doctrine of the Christian system, the reader may doubtless be aware, that one of the earliest phases in which Antichrist revealed himself in the primitive Church, and one of the forms of error which the Apostle John was called specially to combat, was a denial of the veritable assumption on the part of the Redeemer, of the nature of man. "Many deceivers," says he, "are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist." They regarded His Incarnation as a mere phantom or illusion; that His sufferings were not real, but apparent; because His Godhead-nature made the endurance of agony impossible. Their conception of these sufferings seems to have resembled the impression produced in gazing on the desert mirage--the feeling of a reality, though it be no more than an optical deception.\par \par But the language of the sacred writer is implicit and incontrovertible--"So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us"," (or, as that expression means in the original,) "tabernacled among us." He pitched His tent like a Pilgrim in the midst of human encampments; and it was beneath the curtains, so to speak, of a true humanity, that Deity in His Godhead-nature resided. With one notable exception, to which we shall presently allude, that tent was exposed, like the others which surrounded it, to the violence of the moral elements. "He suffered, being, tempted." "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same." "He bore our sins" (not by 'simulating sufferings' which He did not really endure)--"He bore our sins in His own body on the tree."\par \par In speaking, however, of the Savior's real humanity, we must be careful to avoid another heresy of the early Church, and to MAINTAIN THE DISTINCTION OF THE TWO NATURES. There was no intermingling of these two natures. The Godhead was not merged in the humanity, neither was the humanity blended with the Godhead. There was no alteration of the divinity in its appropriation of the veil of flesh; neither was the human element transmuted by its union with supreme Godhead. "He was God in all that was godlike, and man in all that was manlike." In a word, He was the infinite Jehovah; and yet the Brother-kinsman in distinction of nature, but in the unity of an all-glorious Person. In the words of Owen, "Each nature does preserve its own natural essential properties entirely into and in itself; without mixture, without composition or confusion. The deity, in the abstract, is not made the humanity, nor on the contrary, the nature of the man Christ Jesus is not deified; it is not made a God; it does not in heaven coalesce into one nature with the divine by a composition of them. It is exalted in a fullness of all divine perfection, ineffably above the glory of angels and men. It has communications from God in glorious light, love, and power ineffably above them all; but it is still a creature."\par \par It is unnecessary for us to dwell on the evidences borne in the Redeemer's earthly history to the reality of His human soul. Going back in reverential thought to the secluded home at Nazareth, we see, both in His physical and mental development, accordance with the ordinary laws and conditions of our nature. Mentally, we see Him "subject to His parents," "advancing in wisdom." Physically, we see Him "growing in stature," progressing from the helplessness and dependence of infancy and childhood to matured youth--yes, and in order that even in this respect He might fulfill all righteousness, Himself paying by His daily toil the penalty of the original curse--"In the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread."\par \par It is indeed a wondrous thought, and one which must forever dissociate humble labor from dishonor or disgrace, that in union with the infinite, incomprehensible nature of Him who planned the worlds--who of old, from everlasting, set rule and compass on the face of the deep, meting out the heavens with the span of His hand, and "without whom was not anything made that was made,"--might be seen the lowly Son of the lowly Mary, busied at His reputed father's bench in a peasant's cottage--shaping the instruments of farming--the drops of labor falling from His forehead!\par \par There is a well-known authentic instance of an earthly monarch, entering in the disguise of a craftsman one of our own dockyards; laying aside, for the time being, royal attire for the artisan's rough garb. But what was that? Merely the dimmest shadowy type of this mystery of Incarnate Love--of Him, who though in the form of God, and thinking it not robbery to be equal with God, yet made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant of servants! And through all the incidents of His future life, may His veritable humanity be traced. Take one example--His "creaturely dependence" on God, as manifested in His habitual habit of prayer. We see Him rising "a great while before day," and resorting alone, either to the depths of some grove on Olivet, or to the solitude of the higher and more secluded mountain retreats above Bethsaida and Capernaum--there pouring out His soul, now in calm thankfulness and praise, now in strong crying and tears, into the ears of His Father in heaven; and finally, with the same breath of supplication, commending into that Father's hands His departing spirit.\par \par Reader, rejoice in the testimony afforded in the life and ministry of Jesus, to His real assumption, of our nature. "In all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might he a merciful and faithful High Priest." In your sorrows, you can think, Jesus sorrowed. In your temptations, you can think, Jesus was tempted. In your tears, you can think, Jesus wept. In the anticipation of your very death-hour, you can think, Jesus died!\par \par "In every pang that rends the heart,\par The Man of sorrows had a part."\par \par II. It was a PURE and SPOTLESS Humanity. In speaking of the Word made flesh and tabernacling (or tenting) among us, we have already incidentally remarked, that there was only one respect in which that mysterious tabernacle differed from the surrounding human encampments. It is this--that the Son of Man was "yet without sin." "He was holy, harmless, undefiled." "He wore the manacles of the curse entailed by the apostasy of men"--but no more. Amid ten thousand contaminating influences around--mingling in the midst of scenes of temptation, "He did no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth." As the ray of light falling on what is either physically or morally polluted--the noisome marsh--the plague-stricken city--the abode of villainy, still retains its purity; so this divine Life which was "the Light of men," moved amid sin's robber-haunts--a world of moral debasement and pollution, and yet remained undimmed and untainted.\par \par His was not the mere outward drapery of goodness, which sometimes is seen to screen the realities of the fallen and corrupted heart; not like the verdant ivy which, with its graceful festoons, often conceals the crumbling ruin; not the apparently clear well, which, when stirred, reveals the sediment of its miry, slimy depths; not the apparently translucent lake sleeping before you in summer mid-day in calm loveliness, but which, on the storm being let loose, becomes a wild inland sea of turgid mud.\par \par But rather a golden goblet filled with living water--with no deposit or admixture of evil. His soul no wicked passion ever disturbed; His brow no anger ever clouded; His serenity no insults ever ruffled. He could make the triumphant challenge, "Who of you convinces Me of sin?" Every pulse of that stainless nature beat responsive to the will of a Higher, and gloried in this conscious subjectivity.\par \par And it was in every way needful, as the Surety and Substitute of His people, that He should be so. As one chip or flaw in a statue vitiates the work of the sculptor; as one speck--one grain of sand in the telescopic lens, renders it worthless to the optician; so, one taint of pollution in the soul of the incarnate Redeemer--one flaw in the beauteous moral image, would have vitiated His whole work as our Surety. The true paschal sacrifice must be the immaculate Lamb of God. "You are not redeemed with corruptible things, such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish, and without spot."\par \par III. And yet, let us carefully note, that though a sinless, it was a SUFFERING humanity which the Savior of the world assumed.\par \par And we may begin with what, to a holy and elevated Being, is ever the intensest form and experience of suffering--the suffering arising from moral causes; the continual presence of moral evil, and the subjection to fierce temptation; for "He was in all points tempted even as we are." We have just seen that He was incapable of sin, and therefore incapable of yielding to the assaults of evil. But why such exemption? Was it because of the immaculate earthly nature? We cannot think that this would be in itself sufficient to account for His immunity from succumbing to temptation; for if it had, then, as has been well remarked, Adam, as a perfectly pure and sinless creature in Paradise; and Satan, with all his host of once pure and sinless angels, could on this supposition never have fallen--never have swerved from their allegiance and love.\par \par In the case of the adorable Redeemer, it was the Godhead which sustained the humanity, and made it impervious alike to the malignant assaults of human agents, and to spiritual wickednesses in high places. The very fact, however, of this untainted purity, made Him exquisitely sensitive to all contact with sin! We cannot wonder that it was so. Imagine, even on earth, a virtuous and elevated mind cast by circumstances into constant companionship with the vile--the debased--the degraded--those whose every thought and utterance is pollution--what refined torture, beyond any pang of mere physical suffering, would it be to such to be doomed to a lifelong association like this! How intense, then, beyond what imagination can conceive, must His sufferings have been, whose sinless nature had to encounter, day by day, every varied phase and form of evil; the baseness and treachery of man, the malignity of demons, and of the father of lies!\par \par Nor was it moral suffering alone to which He was subjected; His physical nature inherited all the innocent frailties of humanity. As Isaiah says, "Himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses." He was "the Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief." He hungered, and thirsted, and wept. He felt fatigue of body, as well as anguish of soul. He was thankful to rest, a weary pilgrim, by a well on the wayside. He was glad to sleep on the ruffled bosom of the lake, with a coil of ropes for His pillow. Though with a moral grandeur superior to earth's noblest heroism, He "set His face steadfastly" to encounter the hour and power of darkness--yet it was accompanied with deepest soul distress and mental perturbation--"I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I held in anguish until it be accomplished."\par \par When the trial hour arrived, He needed, as we do, the prop of human presence and sympathy--"My soul is exceeding sorrowful"--"tarry here, and watch with Me." Drops of blood, the symbol of His agony, fell from His brow, before that brow was wreathed with thorns, or His body pierced with iron nail or soldier's spear. If He had been exempt from all this, He would have lacked one of the great qualifications of a complete Surety-Savior, that is, the capacity of entering with tender sympathy and compassion into the sorrows and sufferings of His people. But "we have not an High Priest, who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." There is not, as we have already noted, the trial which afflicts His brethren, which did not in an inconceivably intenser form afflict Him. Ridicule, unkindness, the abandonment or treachery of trusted followers--bodily pain--mental anxiety--man-desertion and God-desertion--the bitterness of bereavement--the decease of beloved friends--death itself.\par \par Yes, and there was, in all these sufferings, one ingredient from which we are mercifully exempt. Our sufferings and sorrows come upon us generally by surprise--unknown, unanticipated--in His case, all were marked out, by the foreknowledge of His Godhead, to His omniscient eye. How comforting and consoling, is our divine Redeemer thus identifying Himself with our tried, tempted, woe-worn humanity!\par \par Moreover, in stooping to assume our nature, He selected not the exalted condition, but linked Himself rather with poverty and distress and dependence. The poorest and the humblest, the most wretched and forlorn, might catch balm-words of comfort from the lips of Him who often had not where to lay His head. How different, in this respect, from the mythical incarnations of pagan story! When the favored gods of Olympus come down to earth, it is in some shape or form which leaves their subject-mortals awestruck and crouching at their feet. Such was the incarnation, also, of the Messiah expected by the Jews. Owing to His lowly birth and circumstances, the Christ of Nazareth was not their ideal Savior. He was not the "Angel-God," who spoke to their Fathers in the wilderness, or who came in vision to their exile prophet on the banks of Chebar. In their dreams of His advent, they thought of Him as some ineffable Being with "the paved work of sapphire under His feet, and as it were the body of Heaven in its clearness;" or speaking to them out of the cloudy pillar, or under the overshadowing wings of the cherubim.\par \par We repeat, had He appeared thus, He could not have identified Himself with His people nor they with Him. But when He comes, it is leading a life of poverty and humiliation. His heart bled for every form of human wretchedness. The feeblest cry of human suffering never reached His ear in vain. He wept over obduracy of heart, as well as sorrow of spirit. What a fountain of love is His soul as His last hours drew on! With what majestic utterances does He plead, in the sublime prayer of the upper room, in behalf of the Church throughout all the world! With what exquisite pathos did He comfort the disciples in the prospect of separation! With what tender sympathy did He speak to a sorrowing mother in farewell accents from the cross! The words of Isaiah are a truthful commentary from first to last on His earthly pilgrimage--"You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat." "Yes, it was written long ago that the Messiah must suffer and die."\par \par \par \par IV. This leads us to observe still further, that the Redeemer's was a BROAD and COMPREHENSIVE humanity. It was so in several respects. One of these may be best illustrated by contrast with the character of His precursor, John the Baptist. Of its own peculiar type, John's was a remarkable specimen of a consecrated nature--bold, heroic, earnest, unselfish, self-sacrificing, he was quite the man needed for the times. But he was abnormal. His life was not the pattern or mold which was to shape that of the average Christian of the future. The desert was his home. Austere, unsocial; severed from the world's stir and bustle, and from family claims and amenities, he initiated the existence adopted by thousands of recluses in after ages. The ascetic, however, is not the noble side or type of humanity. That better phase Jesus adopted.\par \par The towns and cities and villages of Galilee and Judea were His places of residence. He subjected Himself to no extravagant self-mortification. He mingled in the world. He cared not for the stigma that He was "a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, the friend of tax-collectors and sinners." He sanctified with His presence occasions of joy and domestic communion. He was found, now at a tax-collector's house, now at the feast of a rich Pharisee, now at a marriage scene--a festive gathering, and taking His disciples along with Him--now in the bosom of a Bethany home, clinging to congenial hearts--Himself, the Dove of Heaven, loving to fold His weary wing, from time to time, in these human rock-clefts--there escaping from the windy storm and tempest.\par \par He would thus reveal Himself as a Brother, not in the false acceptation of the recluse, away from the haunts and sympathies of men, but One mingling (as He knew the mass of His people in all coming time would do), in the throng of a work-day world, and the rough contacts of common life; moving in the midst of human hearts and homes, ministering to human sorrows and grappling with human temptations. Yes! let us think of that lowly nature of His, in its capacity of identifying itself with every class and every phase of being; embracing in its amplitude those who had hitherto been neglected and disowned.\par \par ROME was accustomed to deify the manly virtues alone--Strength, Courage, Heroic endurance. GREECE wreathed her chaplets around the brows of her intellectual heroes, her poets and philosophers, her sculptors and painters; but the weak, the ignorant, the oppressed, had none to vindicate their cause until He came, who pronounced "Blessed"--not the great, or rich, or powerful, or learned--but the meek, the lowly, the poor in spirit, the persecuted, him that had no helper! Hence, as we have already seen, groups composed of every diversity of character tracked His footsteps and hailed in Him a Brother. Stern, strong men like Peter; intellectual, thoughtful men like Thomas; loving and meditative men like John. 'Penitence' crept unabashed to His feet, and bathed them confidingly with tears. 'Sorrow' came with sobbing heart and speechless emotion to be comforted. The 'poor' came with their tale of long endured misery. 'Infancy' came stretching out its tiny arm, and smiled delighted in His embrace.\par \par While He rejoiced with those who rejoiced, He wept with those who wept. The fainting multitudes moved Him to compassion; the one suppliant in the crowd who touched His garment-hem, arrested His steps and evoked His mercy. Every weary wandering bird, with drooping pinion, seemed to come and perch on the thick branches of this mighty Cedar of God! Or, to change the figure, we have pictured to us, in living spiritual reality, a Fountain of infinite mercy--a vast pool of Bethesda--its porches crowded with every diverse type of character, bearing the superscription, "He heals them all."\par \par See Him at last on the cross, with His arms extended, as if in this same comprehensive humanity He would embrace mankind--or, when rising silently from the Mount of Ascension, with outstretched hands He poured His benediction on a receding world! Little had earth imagined the blessing when 'Incarnate Mercy' walked her ungrateful soil! If the princes of this world had known it, "they would not have crucified the Lord of glory!"\par \par "O my Dove, who is in the clefts of the Rock." O Believer, who have sought and found shelter in the glorious crevices, come and anew take refuge in the contemplation of the perfect Manhood of the adorable Son of God! Delight often to think of Him as a Brother in your nature. It is because they come welling from the depths of a human heart--because their music vibrates on a human lip--that the words are so unspeakably tender, "Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."\par \par Exalted, indeed, and full of comfort is the truth unfolded in the preceding chapters--transcendently glorious is that cleft of the Rock, the Supreme Deity of Christ; but in one sense more comforting to downcast, fearing, aching hearts, to think of Him as "God with us!" Hence, when the old Prophet, looking down the vista of ages to the glorious gospel shelter, would single out the element in the contemplation most precious and consolatory, what does he select? Is it that JEHOVAH, in the might of His omnipotence, is "a refuge and strength, a present help in trouble?" No! But "A MAN shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as rivers of waters in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." A MAN!\par \par Man is not always so. Earthly friendships are not thus stable and enduring. Often have we to write, under the sense of bitter estrangement, over the memories of bygone fellowships, "Cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils." "Cursed be he that trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm." But here is one glorious exception. You that are out buffeting the storm, exposed to the whirlwind blast of the desert, battling with care, harassed with anxiety, prostrated with bereavement, stricken with conscious guilt, longing for safe rest and anchorage from earth's sins and sorrows--can understand the deep meaning of the central words in the importunate prayer of blind Bartimeus at the gate of Jericho--"Jesus, O Son of David (O Elder Brother), have mercy on me!"\par \par And that Humanity, as we shall have occasion more specially to observe hereafter, is now on the Throne, and will be FOREVER. We have noted in the opening chapter, that he who loved on earth to pillow his head on the bosom of his Lord, when he subsequently saw that Divine Savior in the splendor of His ascension glories, "fell at His feet as one dead." But he knew in a moment, by the touch of the gracious hand, and the tones of the unchanging voice, that it was "that same Jesus,"--"I am He that lives!" Oh blessed truth, Jesus lives--as a glorified MAN! For me, in human nature, He once walked and wept and bled on earth. For me, in human nature, He now pleads in heaven! It will be from glorified human lips the welcome will at last be given, "Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom!"\par \par Can we echo the prophetic utterance of a saint who lived long antecedent to the Prophet of Patmos; and who, through a glorious vista-view of the future, was able triumphantly to exclaim, "I know that my Redeemer (lit. My Kinsman) lives, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and that though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."\par \par The shadowy patriarchal creed of a distant age and dispensation, was subsequently translated into the personal experiences and hopes of a New Testament apostle. Entering into this new cleft of the Rock of Ages, can we make Paul's fervent words our own?--"I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day!"\par \par \par \cf1\fs23\par } 22[ea01 The Deity of Christ{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 THE DEITY OF CHRIST (part 1)+a00 Clefts of the Rock{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CLEFTS OF THE ROCK\par The Believer's Grounds of Confidence in Christ MM( U03 Christ the Surety-Substitute{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2ɃSqE02 The Humanity of Christ{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11058\f0\fs22 CHRIST THE SURETY-SUBSTITUTE\par \par "Christ has also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." \endash 1 Pet. 3:18\par \par "The Lord redeemed us with His own blood, and gave His life for our life, and so effected our salvation." \endash Irenaeus, 169.\par \par "To the sinner, doomed to eternal punishment, and unable to redeem himself, God the Father says, 'I take My only begotten Son and give Him for you.' The Son says, 'Take Me and be redeemed.'"\par \par "Holy Father, look down from the height of Your sanctuary, and behold this mighty sacrifice which our great High Priest, Your Holy Child Jesus, offers for the sins of His brethren, and have mercy on the multitude of our transgressions." \endash Anselm, 1093.\par \par "By His passion which He suffered, He merited, that as many as believe in Him, shall be as well justified by Him, as though they had never done any sin, and as though they had fulfilled the law to the uttermost. He changes places with us. He takes our sins and wickedness from us; and gives unto us His holiness, righteousness, justice, fulfilling of the law, and so consequently everlasting life." \endash Latimer, 1549.\par \par "My debt is very great, and I am not able to pay anything thereof. But I trust in the riches and bounty of my Surety. Let Him free me who became Surety for me, who has taken my debt upon Himself." \endash John Gerard, 1606.\par \par Mysterious, but most precious Cleft in the Rock of Ages--the VICARIOUS work of Christ as our Substitute and Surety!\par \par It seems incumbent on us, thus early, in the consideration of our great theme, to contemplate the Divine expiatory Offering taken "outside the camp, bearing His reproach"; placing upon His own head the crown of thorns, that He might place upon ours a crown of glory; having, in the might of His glorious Person overcome the sharpness of death, that He might open the kingdom of heaven to us and to all believers.\par \par We concede, at the outset, that such a method of atonement is quite beyond the suggestion of mere reason. Tried by the boasted "verifying faculty," or "principle of congruity" of some modern theological thinkers, it would at once be rejected as unsatisfactory and untenable. Natural law dictates, as the ordinary and equitable course of justice, that for personal guilt there must be personal retribution--"The soul that sins, it shall die." Fatal and destructive, however, would it be to the reception of all revealed truth, were the inquirer to demand summary rejection of every doctrine, at variance with preconceived idea or natural law. What God has unfolded and recorded, it is for us meekly, and with unquestioning docility, to receive. And if there be one truth more vividly and expressly dwelt upon in Scripture than another, it is that of a Surety-Savior, suffering in our room and stead. If there be one utterance more frequently proclaimed than another, from Genesis to Revelation--from Abel's first sacrifice, to the last song of the ransomed, as they gather round the slain Lamb in heaven--it is this, that "without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin!"\par \par Socinianism, and its modified rationalistic theories, in exalting the goodness and boundless beneficence of God, overlook or discard two great cardinal truths, which, despite their attempted rejection, everywhere assert themselves in the pages of Revelation--that is, that SIN is an infinite evil, entailing and demanding an infinite penalty; and that GOD, the Almighty One to whom we are responsible, is a moral Governor, requiring the vindication of His violated law. While "mercy and truth go before His face," "justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne." Not that there is any implied conflict or antagonism between the divine Holiness and Love--these two attributes of the Supreme Being must ever act in strictest harmony. But regarding Him as infinitely just and righteous, as well as beneficent and merciful, it would be to impeach His moral character, and to subvert the immutable principles on which His government rests, were He to grant indemnity to the guilty without any expression of His hatred at sin, or of His obligation to visit it with just, proper, and suitable punishment.\par \par As "God absolute," indeed, it may be affirmed, and with truth, that He can do anything. As God absolute, He has the sovereign power to confer on His rebellious subjects a free, unlimited pardon--a universal amnesty. At His omnipotent mandate, every rebel-chain could be broken, and this revolted race again placed within the sphere of His regards.\par \par But what He could do as the Almighty Sovereign (with reverence we say it), He could not do as the Righteous Lawgiver. As such, He is under a moral necessity, arising out of His own holy nature, to dispense His laws with equity. "It became Him, of whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." The whole teaching of Scripture represents Christ the Son of God, as identified in law with those He came to redeem. As Adam (to use the theological term of our old divines) stood the representative or federal head of the first covenant; so Jesus, the second Adam, the Lord from Heaven, stands as the vicar of His Church, in the room and stead of each of its members. Having voluntarily taken upon Him their responsibilities, He must endure in His person the penalty annexed to their transgressions.\par \par We have already seen, in the former chapter (in speaking of His assumed humanity), that He was Himself "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." He had no personal complicity in our guilt--and we must therefore beware of the unwarrantable phraseology of those who speak of Him in connection with His vicarious work, as "becoming a sinner." We only, however, use the words of Scripture when we say "He became Sin." He was reckoned and dealt with, in the eye of the divine law, as guilty; as if the condensed transgressions of the millions He came to save ("His unknown agonies," as it is significantly expressed in the Greek Liturgy), were poured into His mysterious cup. All the bitter experiences of His passion, the mocking, the scourging, the jeers and taunts, the thorn-crowning, the God-desertion--were His due, not personally, but by imputation. "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us."\par \par Different indeed, in kind, was the penalty endured by this Almighty Substitute, from what sinners themselves would have suffered, had they been left to undergo the full measure of punishment due to their transgressions. It belonged, however, to the Great Creditor to accept some satisfactory method, by which the infinite debt might admit of being discharged, without infringing the rights of justice, or lowering and violating the sanctity of His law. And, owing to the dignity of the Sufferer's Person, this Atonement rendered by Christ was of surpassing value. It was THE SUBSTITUTION OF INCARNATE DEITY. The altar of His Divine nature sanctified the gift, and imparted a priceless worth to the divine oblation. As "God manifest in the flesh," He was free from the law, and the obligations of creatureship. Had He been less than divine, He could not possibly have obeyed for another. As a creature, He could not have transferred to another the merit of His obedience. Moreover, on the supposition, for a moment, of the admissibility of substitution in the case of an angelic being; one creature-substitute could only at the utmost discharge a single debt. It would be creature for creature, life for life. But owing to Christ's peerless dignity as the eternal Son of God, not only was He above the obligation of all natural law--"a law unto Himself," having "power over His own life;" but the sacrifice of the Divine Victim was of that infinite value, that the One offering was deemed sufficient to effect the ransom of "a multitude which no man can number."\par \par On this account, His whole work has received in theological language the appellation of a "satisfaction." It was, in the eye of God's righteous law, a glorious and all-sufficient equivalent. It met all the requirements of Sovereign Justice, Righteousness and Truth. Remitting the myriad liabilities of an insolvent world, the Great Creditor signs a full discharge. The holiness of His name and nature, and the righteous principles of His moral government, remain intact and inviolate.\par \par But let us proceed to examine the assertions of Scripture, and observe how this great truth of Christ's substitution runs throughout the Revealed Word like a golden thread. It would require a volume to do justice to the subject--little more can be overtaken here, than to glance at a few of the more prominent Typical, Prophetical, and Apostolic testimonies.\par \par I. The TYPICAL testimonies of Christ's vicarious atonement. The idea of substitution is interlaced and interwoven with the whole Mosaic ritual. The voice of "the blood of sprinkling" spoke in wordless eloquence on the altars of Israel, as they ran daily with the blood of slain victims. Not a few of these were fellowship, or thank offerings--but the vast bulk of them were penal and expiatory. Not only so, but what we wish especially to note at present is, the remarkable testimony they afford to the principle of vicarious suffering--that the blood of the animal was shed in the place or stead of another. Every offering was a ransom for the sin, or for the life, of the human offender. It was life for life, blood for blood. The victims were subjected to the penalty incurred by the transgressor--there was a symbolic imputation of his guilt to them; and thus, typically, these sacrifices "were ordained to take away sin."\par \par We see this vicarious, or substitutionary element, in Israel's INDIVIDUAL sacrifices, offerings made to expiate the sin of individual offenders. The offerer brought his victim, laid his hand upon its head, and made confession of his crime. "He shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord. And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him."\par \par Again, as regards the guilt of THE WHOLE CONGREGATION, the command was given, "They shall offer a young bullock for the sin, and bring him before the tabernacle of the congregation. And the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands upon the head of the bullock before the Lord, and the bullock shall be killed before the Lord. And the priest shall make an ATONEMENT for them, and it shall be forgiven them."\par \par Or, once more, as perhaps the most expressive of all types of the Great Substitution; on the solemn anniversary of THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, the High Priest, clad in his linen garments, appeared as the Representative of Israel. Two goats (constituting one offering) were brought to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. The people stood round in speechless solemnity. The one was immolated (that is--sacrificed); its blood was carried within the veil, and sprinkled on the mercy-seat. Laying his hands on the head of the other living animal, he made confession over it of all the sins of the people; and then, with this load of imputed guilt, it was led away into the depths of the wilderness never more to be seen. Hear the significant appointment of God Himself--"When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tabernacle, and the altar, he must bring the living goat forward. He is to lay both of his hands on the goat's head and confess over it all the sins and rebellion of the Israelites. In this way, he will lay the people's sins on the head of the goat; then he will send it out into the wilderness, led by a man chosen for this task. After the man sets it free in the wilderness, the goat will carry all the people's sins upon itself into a desolate land." Leviticus 16:20-22\par \par What type could possibly be more significant than this?--the imposition of hands, accompanied with confession of sin--the sins of "all Israel"--typically transferred to the innocent substitute. The countless iniquities of Christ's people are surely seen meeting on the head of the great Antitypical Scapegoat--the atoning Sacrifice of Calvary, who has borne them forever away into a land of oblivion. If all this substitutionary ceremonial ritual had no reference to the Divine Antitype--then we ask, What was its design?\par \par Standing by itself, without this New Testament 'anti-type', it is not only a meaningless appointment, but (again, with all reverence we say it), it would have been an appointment unworthy of God. There is no natural connection whatever (there is rather an inherent unfitness and incongruity), between the slaying of a mere animal, or the laying the hands on its head, and the expiation of human guilt. "It was impossible that the blood of bulls and of goats" (even heaps on heaps of slain irrational beasts, which are so far beneath in dignity the nature of the transgressor) "could take away sin." There was an utter inefficacy and inadequacy in such to expiate moral guilt. The very conscience of the offerer repudiated such a thought. They were powerless to pacify the soul under a sense of its sin, and to remove the Divine displeasure--"For the gifts and sacrifices that the priests offer are not able to cleanse the consciences of the people who bring them." But the whole of this strange, bloody ritual receives at once a wondrous significance, when we connect it with more precious blood, and a more precious Life--with the imputation of our guilt to the Lamb of God--"Christ our Passover sacrificed FOR US."\par \par II. Let us pass from the typical, to the PROPHETICAL testimonies of the vicarious sufferings of the Redeemer. Two among several other passages may suffice.\par \par The first, is the 53d chapter of Isaiah; that wonderful Old Testament picture of the Savior's humiliation. Again and again is the truth we are now unfolding there brought prominently before us--that the Lord Jesus took our sins actually upon Him--that He suffered in our room and stead.\par \par Ver. 4, "Surely He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows."\par \par Ver. 5, "But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed."\par \par Ver. 6, "The Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all."\par \par Ver. 8, "For the transgression of My people was He stricken." "By His knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities."\par \par Ver. 12, "And He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many."\par \par What could be more explicit than these varied statements?--that He who rose up before the Prophet's vision as "the Man of Sorrows," was really the Substitute of the guilty; enduring the stripes that were due to us--carrying the load of sin we should have borne. Though sinless Himself, yet, as the Vicar of His people--enrolled--"numbered, among transgressors."\par \par The other prophetical passage we may cite in confirmation of the doctrine, is from the Book of Daniel. That Prophet, speaking in the most explicit and indubitable language of "Messiah the Prince," who was "to finish (the) transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in an everlasting righteousness," adds, "And after threescore and two weeks (of years) shall Messiah be cut off" (by death), "but not for Himself." He was to suffer, but it was for no sin of His own, for no personal demerit. He was to finish the transgression of His people, to discharge their debt, by the offering of Himself--and the Prophet immediately adds, that having thus completed His atoning work, "In the midst of the week, He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease." The substance having been revealed, the shadows melt away. The Divine Antitype having come--the great Antitypical Sacrifice being offered, the ceremonial ritual is abrogated; all other sacrifices and oblations are abolished.\par \par III. We proceed now to advert to the APOSTOLIC testimonies in support of this same cardinal truth--Christ's substitutionary atonement. In doing so, we shall attempt little more than simply quote a few appropriate verses, in themselves so clear and explicit as to require no comment. Observe, however, the force of the preposition "for," as denoting substitution, which occurs in most of them. "When we were without strength, in due time Christ died FOR the ungodly." "He was made sin FOR us, who knew no sin." "Made a curse FOR US." "He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up FOR us all." "He was delivered FOR our offences." "Christ was once offered to bear the sin of many." "Who gave Himself FOR us." "He gave Himself FOR us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor." "Christ has also once suffered for sins, the just FOR the unjust, that He might bring us to God." "Who loved us, and gave Himself FOR us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity." "Now once in the end of the world has He appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." "Who His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree. By His stripes we are healed."\par \par And if we ascend from the testimony of the Church on earth, to that of the Church glorified in Heaven, it is the same. "You have redeemed us to God by Your blood." "To Him who loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood."\par \par If language has any meaning, these and other passages are surely conclusive. We repeat, the preposition "for," so often employed in these verses, undoubtedly supposes and implies substitution--one put in the place or room of another. "Christ died FOR us"--not as the Socinians say, that He died for our good, for our advantage; not that He became incarnate merely to be the Revealer of the Father's love, a spotless Example, the Ideal of perfect humanity (though this, as we shall subsequently show, was included as a subordinate object in the divine mission); neither that His sufferings are merely to be regarded in the light of "afflictions" or "calamities," similar to what His people are often called upon to undergo in this life; but, He came as the law-fulfiller--the sin-bearer. Sin and guilt were not only in a figurative, but in a literal sense laid upon Him.\par \par Take away this feature in the doing and dying of Jesus, and the Incarnation is shorn of its glory; and the whole 'typical economy' becomes an enigma. It resolves itself into a mysterious, incomprehensible, wasteful expenditure of blood and animal suffering; and the Apostolic writings become a mass of distorted reasoning. But, accept the view of Christ as a vicarious Sacrifice, a real Substitute for human guilt, dying in the stead of transgressors, then the whole mystery is solved. Then there is a tongue put in every bleeding wound of every expiring victim--a halo encircles the fire and smoke ascending from every altar. These proclaim in dreadful, but significant symbolism, what He to whom they pointed expressed in His own simple utterance, "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many."\par \par We may conclude, by refuting one false and erroneous deduction with which some have ventured to charge this doctrine, that is, that it is derogatory to the benevolence and beneficence of God; that it represents Him in the unamiable and unloving light of a rigorous Exactor, who requires His wrath to be appeased by the blood of an innocent Sufferer--no, further, that as the natural consequence of entertaining such a dogma, our affections are necessarily transferred from the exacting inexorable Lawgiver, to Him who, by His voluntary anguish and death, has effected the reconciliation. Such repulsive views of the Divine Being, however, are false and empty assumptions, containing an utter perversion of Catholic teaching and Scripture language.\par \par What is the true Bible representation? God is there brought before us, as we have already seen, infinitely Holy--immaculately Righteous--inviolably Faithful and Just--His law uncompromising in its demands, rigidly exacting in its penalties. This Almighty Being is represented, moreover, as requiring an adequate sacrifice and satisfaction--no, in a bold figure, as summoning the sword of Justice to "awake against the Man who is His fellow." But, if we draw aside the veil, and look still farther into the secrets of the Divine counsels, we shall see that the motive-principle of all was the Father's divine compassion and mercy. It was not the substitution of the Great Sacrifice that was the cause of God's love to our world. That love not only existed antecedently in the Divine mind, but it was that infinite Love which prompted and devised the amazing plan of redemption. "God so loved the world"--"GOD commends His love." GOD "spared not His own Son." It was His originating love which provided the Lamb for the burnt-offering. The true method, therefore, of viewing the Atonement of Calvary is to regard it, from first to last, as a stupendous plan of Divine Sovereign Grace and Mercy exercised in consistence with Justice and Truth--a rainbow, indeed, seen with a dark background of suffering and wrath, but in whose blended tints and colors "mercy rejoices over judgment."\par \par Reader, are you able fully to accept--no, to rejoice in this stupendous doctrine, and by faith to appropriate its sublime verities? to view it, not as a beautiful figure, a typical fiction, but as a sober reality, denoting and asserting a veritable transference of your guilt to the Lamb of God--a glorious crevice in the Rock of Ages, in which you may fold your wings and sink to rest as you sing, "He loved me, and gave Himself FOR me?"\par \par Rejoice, also, that that transference has taken place; the negotiation is completed, the Substitute has been provided, the ransom has been paid. It is not a matter which now remains in suspense and unaccomplished. Many on earth have noble and lofty intentions which have never been fulfilled. Many a high enteprise has been devised; but the enthusiasm wears past, the opportunity is lost, or the resolve is strangled at the birth. Not so with this great salvation. What Christ undertook He has performed. He does not utter the unavailing soliloquy and lament in His heavenly palace, over an apostate world, which David did on the occasion of the death of his ruined child, "Would God I had died for you." He has died; He has fulfilled His covenant-pledge as our Surety. Our lost inheritance has been recovered. The prophetic words have become now the utterance of an historic fact--He HAS seen of the travail of His soul, and is satisfied!\par \par Well do we know that the doctrine we have now been considering, is in these modern times disliked by many; by not a few rejected. We do not hear it enunciated in our systems of theology, nor proclaimed in our pulpits, as its importance demands. Many prefer coming with Cain's bloodless offerings of thanksgiving (the deist sacrifice) rather than, like Abel, bringing the bleating victim from his fold. They are willing to behold Christ the Son, but not Christ "the Lamb of God." They build the temple, but they disown the altar. Believer, be it yours ever to look to the lintels and door-posts sprinkled with blood. Clasp this glorious truth to your heart of hearts--Christ your Substitute. All He did, reckon as having been done by you. When He was prostrated on the cold earth in His soul-struggle in Gethsemane, or when He trod the blood-stained path along the dolorous way, or when He uttered the Eloi-cry on the cross--think, it was your sins that were draining these drops of anguish, and extracting these strong cryings, and pleadings, and tears.\par \par Blood is death; and if by faith you be sprinkled with the sacred token, you are reckoned to have died in the Surety. When He gave His precious, peerless life, it was equivalent to your giving yours. Be assured that this is the only view of the death of Jesus that will stand the test and scrutiny of Scripture; or that, as a strong and all-sufficient rock-cleft, will be able to ensure solid and satisfying peace in believing. It is not the philosophic divinity which consists in the deification of mere virtue--it is not eliminating these peculiar doctrines of the cross, and substituting cold negations, that will pacify conscience.\par \par "Jesus, Your blood and righteousness,\par My beauty are, my glorious dress;\par 'Mid flaming worlds in these arrayed,\par With joy I shall lift up my head.\par \par "When from the dust of death I rise,\par To take my mansion in the skies,\par This all my hope, this all my plea,\par That Jesus lived and died for me."\par \par Let what will form your alone stable and satisfying trust then, be the ground of your hope and confidence now. Accept Him, unhesitatingly, as your Surety- Savior, "the end of the law for righteousness." See how He has "blotted out the handwriting that was against you, and has taken it out of the way, nailing it to His cross." See how God, the injured Creditor, has cancelled your obligations. Never again, in point of law, can your legion-sins appear; they are obliterated forever. Let the mightiest angel in heaven be delegated to go in quest of these sins! Let him roam creation! Let him search every corner of the earth, and every cavern of old ocean. He will come back from the mission with the tidings--"The iniquity of Israel is sought for, and there is none; and the sins of Judah, and they are not found." "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."\par \par \par \cf1\fs23\par } om God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood."--Rom. 3:25\par \par "Happy is he alone, to whom the Lord does not impute transgression--to have Him propitious to me against whom alone I have sinned. When my soul is troubled with the view of my sinfulness, I look at Your mercy, and am refreshed." \endash Bernard, 1123.\par \par "The Everlasting God be praised! We have a remedy and a sure helper. Christ the Son of the living God has fulfilled the law for us, to deliver us from sin." \endash Latimer, 1546.\par \par "Under this shadow, O my soul, refresh yourself. If your sins fear the hand of justice, behold your sanctuary; if your offences tremble before the Judge, behold your Advocate ; if your creditor threatens a prison, behold your bail. Behold the Lamb of God, that has taken your sins from you." \endash Francis Quarles, 1592.\par \par "Sprinkled with His atoning blood,\par Safely before our God we stand;\par As in the Rock the Prophet stood,\par Beneath His shadowing hand." \endash Keble.\par \par A similar cleft in the same Great Rock--a kindred subject to that which it was our endeavor to unfold in the preceding chapter, invites our thoughts in the present. It would be easy, indeed, to limit ourselves to a cursory examination of these views of sacrifice and oblation in the outer court of the Earthly, before we pass within the veil of the Heavenly Temple, with its redeemed worshipers and ministering seraphim. But we deem it needful, in the first instance, to have our confidence well assured on the procuring cause of all that wealth of present privilege and future bliss--to see and acknowledge the Divine necessity there was, in bringing many sons unto glory, that the Captain of their salvation be made perfect through suffering. Unless the Rock had been "stricken," "smitten of God," there could have been no 'clefts' in it. Take away the sacrificial element from the Incarnation of the Redeemer, and you sweep from beneath the feet every stable and reliable ground of confidence and safety. Let others speak slightingly and disparagingly of "dead dogma," and affect the possession of breadth and liberality of sentiment in rejecting with a sneer what they presume to call "special theories of atonement." Be it ours rather, with humble reliance on the teaching of that Spirit promised to "guide into all truth," to have our faith on such great foundation verities "grounded and settled;" and conscious of having attained a sure footing on what cannot be shaken, to be able to say, in the simple couplet of the well-known hymn\endash\par "On Christ the solid Rock I stand,\par All other ground is shifting sand."\par \par Once more, then, under another form, let our thoughts revert to the central, kernel doctrine of our most holy faith--CHRIST THE PROPITIATION, "Whom God has set forth to be" (not merely the Ideal of human perfection, the Manifestation of a life of stainless virtue and sublime self-sacrifice, but) "a Propitiation through faith in His blood."\par \par That word "Propitiation" occurs only three times in the New Testament--in the present passage of Paul's Roman Epistle, and twice in the Epistles of John. The original word, as is well known, refers to the lid of the Ark of the Covenant in the Tabernacle or Temple. It is the same expression which is found in the ninth chapter of Hebrews, and there rendered "mercy-seat"--"The Cherubims of glory shadowing the mercy-seat;" or as it is more faithfully, perhaps, translated in most of the old versions of the English Bible by the word propitiatory.\par \par This covering of the ark was made of fragrant acacia-wood. Its lining and corner-pieces were of pure beaten gold. It was protected by the overshadowing wings of the Cherubim; while the Shekinah, or symbol of the Divine Presence, in its dreadful cloudy splendor, rested between. Once every year (on the Great Day of Atonement) the Jewish High Priest entered the Holiest of all. The warm blood of the slain victim, sprinkled on the "Propitiatory," flowed down on the pavement, where he stood as the officiating representative of the nation. The root word (the verb) from which the term Propitiation in the original is derived, signifies "to appease wrath," "to turn away anger."\par \par It speaks of an offence, and an offender; and the typical "Propitiatory sacrifice" comes as a shield, or guard, between the offender on the one hand, and the Being offended on the other. It is scarcely needful to pause, in order to explain the expressive symbol; and how the Israelitish type is fulfilled and illustrated in the person and official work of the Divine Antitype. As we found in the previous chapter, God's law has been dishonored, its sacredness violated, its penalties incurred. Let us not be misunderstood. We must fastidiously guard, as most derogatory to His glory, against the use of language that would, by remotest implication, impute to the Great Supreme anything analogous to those vindictive passions resident in the human bosom. He is "offended," because of the infinite holiness and rectitude of His nature. He must, as a moral Governor, uphold intact and without compromise, every jot and tittle of His law, and maintain the honor and majesty of His Throne. His justice and righteousness dare not be impeached in the eyes of the other sections of His vast empire.\par \par Darius the King, we read, made a decree, and set his royal seal to it. It led to the inevitable destruction of an innocent man. That night, sleep was banished from the royal pillow--no sound of harp or flute or dulcimer was heard, during those gloomy watches, within the palace walls. He had "labored until the going down of the sun to deliver Daniel;" but all in vain. Why in vain? Why might not that Eastern despot, whose will was law, have in a moment ordered the release of the captive Jew? No, "Know, O King, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, that no decree nor statute which the King establ ishes, may be changed." In a far higher, loftier, more solemn sense is this true of Him by whom kings reign. The statutes of the Eternal are unchangeable. "A man's heart devises his (own) way," but "the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand." The pillars of His Throne have immutability to rest upon; and "though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished."\par \par But the blood of the Great Surety has been shed; the Lamb for the burnt-offering has been immolated (sacrificed); the Veil is rent in twain; the prophetic hymn of the angels at Messiah's birth has had its exalted strains fulfilled--while glory has been secured to God in the highest, peace has been proclaimed on earth, and goodwill to men. And now, as the sinner stands, like the High Priest of old, in front of the Mercy-seat, we see, significantly symbolized, at once the offence, the offender, and the Great Propitiation. Inside the ark were deposited, among other sacred things, the two tables of stone, on which are inscribed  the words of the Eternal decalogue. That law demands satisfaction. Had it not been for the lid of which we have just spoken, these imprisoned commandments would leap like fiery swords from their scabbards, and mingle the worshiper's blood with his sacrifices. Like a shield, however, the Propitiatory intervenes!\par \par Even in its material adornments it was typical; the acacia-wood was emblematic of the real humanity of the Divine Propitiator; moreover, the fragrant acacia-wood pointed signific antly to His purity and sinlessness; while the golden border and golden clasps at the corners, with equal impressiveness symbolized His Deity--the Deity and Humanity conjoined, but not blended or intermixed. Behold, then, we repeat, the sinner within that dreadful sanctuary--the law unabrogated, unrepealed, uttering its denunciation--"The soul that sins, it must die!" The Cherubim bending over the mercy-seat, appear, as they point to its symbolic covering, to proclaim the words which head this chapter--"Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation!" While the worshiper, through his representative, drawing near with the blood in his hand--sprinkling it above the mercy-seat, and before the mercy-seat, until the purple stream falls on the floor, offers the plea as he points to the Propitiatory--"Behold our shield, look on the face of Your anointed."\par \par Or, again, in still more impressive words--"God be merciful to me a sinner." We say, in more impressive words; for it is remarkable and well worthy of note, that in this prayer of the Tax-collector, the verb translated "be merciful" corresponds with the Greek for "propitiation." "Be propitious," he cries; but it is mercy by sacrifice; it is mercy through the atoning blood of the Great Surety. Blessed meeting-place between offending man and an offended God!\par \par If we can venture for a moment to personify the attribute of JUSTICE, we see her clad in vestments of stainless purity, with the sword in one hand and the balances of equity in the other. As we follow her within the Veil, we behold her standing by the Propitiatory with sheathed weapon, side by side with Mercy. We can hear her, within the very shadow of the decalogue, uttering the glorious words--"The Just God, yet the Savior;" "the just, yet the Justifier"--yes, singing in concert the special song of the sister attribute, "O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, because His MERCY endures forever!"\par \par Before we close, let us note the special declaration made by the apostle regarding this divine Propitiation, "Whom God has set forth" a word which in the original means "set publicly apart," "manifested publicly for some great end or object." There are many ways which will suggest themselves, in which the Eternal Father, the Originator of the scheme of Redeeming Grace, has "set forth" the Son of His love, as Mediator and Surety for the fallen.\par \par He was set forth from all Eternity in the divine counsels. In the archives of Heaven His name and purpose were recorded--"In the volume of the book it is written of Me--I come to do Your will, O God." He was set forth in the very hour of the Fall, in the first promise of Redemption; as well as in the "coats of skin" of the first sacrifices, with which the guilty pair covered their nakedness. He was set forth in Noah's altar-fires on Ararat; in the glorious tints of His rainbow, and in the Covenant of which it was the symbol.\par \par He was set forth in the Patriarchal Church, in Abraham's offering on Mount Moriah, and in Jacob's ladder at Bethel.\par \par In the Mosaic Church, He was set forth in the sprinkling of the lintels and doorposts; in the smitten rock and bronze serpent. He was set forth, more fully still, in that vast and complicated ceremonial, upon every part of which is significantly inscribed "Not without blood,"--"the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."\par \par He was set forth in the Prophetic Church, from Jacob's earliest prophecy of the Shiloh, and Balaam's of the Star, to Malachi's last glowing figure of the Sun of righteousness.\par \par And then, when the fullness of time came, He was more peculiarly 'manifested.' The morning stars, and the sons of God, that had sung responsive their jubilant anthem at creation's birth, again meet to celebrate in joyous strains the birth hour of an Incarnate Deity! The Shepherds of Bethlehem, and the Wise Men of Arabia (the representative Jew and Gentile, the representative rich and poor), gather around His cradle, not in a palace, but at a manger, to sing 'Glory to the newborn King.'\par \par Again and again, and with ever-growing publicity, was He manifested in the eyes of His Church. At His baptism, He received (as viceregent, or substitute,) a sinner's rite at a sinner's hands, accompanied with the proclamation from the excellent glory, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." In His transfiguration, He was set forth, indeed, in the first instance, in the majesty of His Godhead, robed in the Shekinah cloud--the "white and glistering" clothing--delegates from heaven and earth met to do Him homage. But even in that scene of transcendent brightness, it is as the Propitiation He appears; for it is a memorable feature in the transaction, that these lofty messengers from the Church triumphant, in their converse with the members of the Church militant, talk, not of His supreme dignity, nor of the coming and resultant glory of His Messiahship, but "they spoke of the death which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem."\par \par As the closing scenes of His public ministry thicken upon us, how pre-eminently (almost exclusively) is it as the Propitiation He is revealed. Gethsemane, the Judgment-Hall, the house of Caiaphas, the dolorous way, the dreadful culminating scene, when, raised above the ground, He hung on the cross an ignominious spectacle; when Jew and Gentile exhausted their weapons of ruffianly taunt and mockery, with scourge, and nail, spear, and thorn; and when, after man had done his worst, over and above all, the cry was heard from the Lord of Hosts, "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd!"\par \par It is in the same light (as the Great Sacrifice and Oblation--the Satisfaction for His people's sins), He has been set forth for the last eighteen centuries in His own appointed ordinances--specially in the proclamation of His glorious Gospel, and in His great memorial rite, with its simple yet significant commemorative symbols. He is set forth in the varied experiences of His people, in their every season of exigency and trial. These are too numerous to admit of being specified.\par \par At no time are His presence and grace more signally exhibited and realized than at the hour of death. It is then, looking to the golden 'shield' of their covenant-Ark, that His spiritual Israel, like the old band of wilderness warriors, pass dry shod and brave-hearted through the border river, to the shores of the heavenly Canaan. The cheering assurance uttered 3000 years ago, has lost none of its comfort, "Behold the Ark of the covenant of the Lord of the whole earth passes over before you into Jordan!" In one of his Patmos visions, the beloved disciple beheld "the Temple of God," and "the Ark of his testament." What was this, but the symbolical disclosure of the Great Propitiation; as He was witnessed by the dying martyr Stephen, and by triumphing multitudes in subsequent ages at a similar hour? "I see Heaven opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God."\par \par A grander and sublimer revealing of His Person and dignity (afterwards to be considered), will take place on the day of the "manifestation of the sons of God,"--emphatically designated "the day of His appearing;" when still, as the Son of Man, seated on His Throne of Glory, "every eye shall see Him." He will be set forth finally, as we shall come also more particularly to note, through all Eternity, in the midst of His Church triumphant; still as the Propitiation; wearing the mysterious memorials of suffering in the blessed world where suffering is unknown--while this is to form the eternal hymn and ascription of His ransomed--"Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing, for You have redeemed us to God by Your blood!"\par \par On a review of these imperfect reflections, are any prompted to ask the urgent question--"How am I to obtain the shelter of such a Rock-cleft as this? How can I procure access and welcome to the true Mercy-seat?" There are no barriers of exclusion. The veil is rent; the approach is free; the Propitiation is made yours, "through faith in His blood."\par \par How many among the votaries of a false and spurious Christianity, are looking to Christ through material relics--pieces of the so-called true cross, fragments of the spear or thorn-crown, or the seamless robe! We are called to look "through faith." How many more are groping their way to Him through propitiations of their own--penances, and prayers, and fastings, and flagellations. The propitiation is completed--"Whom God has set forth." If the Jewish High-priest, as he stood at the mercy-seat, instead of sprinkling the blood, had stripped the jewels from breastplate and mitre, and flung them on the sacred chest, what would all have availed? Nothing. There was but one offering efficacious there--an offering composed not of 'pearls from the ocean, or gold from the mine;'--"When I see THE BLOOD I will pass over you." Significant testimony to the alone method by which pardon and peace are procured, through the atoning work of the Great Antitype, "the one true, perfect, and all-sufficient oblation!"\par \par Oh, believer, who is in this cleft of the Rock, exult in your inviolable security! Sheltered therein, the curses of the law are made impotent. As the angel came down by night to the camp of the Assyrians, and strewed the Judean plain with their corpses, rendering every weapon powerless which the dead w arriors grasped in their hands; so has the great Angel of the Covenant--the true "Prince who stands for the children of His people"--descended in the deep night of the world's darkness, and made the arm of the law, with all its denunciations, incapable of inflicting so much as one wound.\par \par The efficacy of the blood of Christ is INEXHAUSTIBLE. The book of Revelation unfolds 144,000, with lustrous robes, washed and made white in it; and still the Propitiation is "set forth;" still the way into the Holiest and to acceptance is open. Come, approach it, with this one only passport to pardon and forgiveness in your hand. See the old, but ever-binding and obligatory Tables of Sinai's law, screened out of sight by the intervening barrier--hidden, as a covenant of works, by the better work of Jesus. God has set Him forth as a Propitiatory. He (the true 'shield, and lifter-up of your head'), "stands between the living and the dead, and the plague is stayed!"\par \par \par \cf1\fs23\par } 9U uE08 The Tenderness of Jesus{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 QmE07 The Sympathy of Jesus{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcutu06 The Immutability of Christ{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fSn1905 Christ the Manifestation of the Father{\rtf1\a"Qu=04 Christ the Propitiation{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CHRIST THE PROPITIATION\par \par "Wh#nsi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CHRIST THE MANIFESTATION OF THE FATHER\par \par "Who is the image of the invisible God."--Col. 1:15\par \par "God is not called the Father of Vengeance, but the Father of Mercies." \endash Bernard, 1123.\par \par "Let us accustom ourselves more and more profoundly to sink into the blessed mystery of our most holy faith; $so that we may correct all transcendental, vague thoughts about God, by setting Christ at once before our eyes. He is the Visibility of the Invisible, as far as, and in such way, as that may be seen. Even in the heavenly 'beholding' throughout Eternity, there will be no showing of the Father out of and apart from Christ." \endash Stier.\par \par A new and most blessed Rock-cleft is now to engage our thoughts. In the two preceding chapters, we have endeavored to extract grounds of confidence and %trust from the contemplation of Christ as the Surety-Substitute, and as the Propitiation for the sins of the world. In doing so, it behooved us to dwell on the character of the Supreme Being as a Moral Governor--the Holy, the Righteous, the Just, the True, the inflexible Guardian and Dispenser of Laws based upon principles of everlasting rectitude, demanding the payment of penalties annexed to transgression. But having laid this broad and needful foundation; beholding every attribute of the Divine nature &magnified and made honorable in the Cross of the Divine Sufferer--bringing a revenue of glory to God, and of blessing to the human race; we shall now proceed, in the light of that Cross, to consider a new revelation of the Almighty. We have pondered Jehovah's character as Lawgiver and Judge. We are now to regard Him manifested in Christ, in His beneficent, paternal character as a FATHER.\par \par It is worthy of remembrance, as appropriate alike to the present theme, and to the title of this vol'ume, that when God, in long ages preceding the Incarnation, made a revelation of Himself to Moses, it was in reply to the request of the 'lawgiver' (a request which embodies the urgent query of humanity), "I beseech you show me Your glory" and, as if to shadow forth the great mystery of a coming dispensation, the Divine Being "set him IN THE CLEFTS OF A ROCK, and made all His glory to pass before him." As the mystic, undefined Presence of the Great I AM, swept by the face of that mountain watch-tower--nat(ure's shrine; the proclamation of the Sacred Name was sounded in the listener's ears.\par \par But what was the Revelation? Not, God, dreadful and terrible, enshrined in the blackness and darkness, the lightnings and tempests, which so lately played on the mountain-top frowning over His servant's head; but words composed of letters as if written in bright sunbeam--"The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious." It is this typical vision of Moses, fulfilled and realized in the Person of the ador)able Antitype, which is to occupy our contemplation in the present chapter. We are invited to enter "the Clefts of the Rock" to behold the glory of Jehovah. But, as in the case of the Jewish Lawgiver, it is to have our fears calmed and our trust established, by an apocalypse (an unveiling, or revealing), not of majesty or terror, but of ineffable paternal love.\par \par What is God? The foundation truth of all theology, and indeed of all thought, has been the perplexing problem of every age. Who* is He? What is His character? What are my personal relationships to Him, and His to me? Nature contributes her own quota to the solution of the question. This invisible One is visibly imaged and understood in "the things He has made." Wondrous and diversified are the illustrated pages of that Great book in showing forth His praise. These are formed of woods and mountain, lake and river; of vernal sky and summer verdure; of virgin morning, noontide brightness, dewy eve; night with her sable mantle woven w+ith gems, the silent pageantry of moon and stars; the song of birds in the groves, the music of streams, the hues of flowers spread in profusion over hill and dale, the solemn chant of winds, the many voices of the ceaseless sea.\par \par And not only so; but as we gaze on this beautiful world-temple, full of beneficent agencies and gracious provisions, what are all such combined, but endless affirmations of the wisdom and power, the graciousness and love, of the Omnipotent Framer and Sustainer., In this Temple does every one and every thing speak of the glory of His natural perfections. And yet, the witness so eloquent in proclaiming and authenticating His Being, pronounces at best only a partial deliverance on His other moral attributes. Farther, the choir of nature's vast shrine is not always in harmony. Its notes are at times grating and dissonant. These bright skies have, ever and anon, their dark clouds and deep-voiced thunders. These winds at times revel with their wild music over devastat-ed fields or shipwrecked crews. That air which wafts the perfume of flowers, and transmits the sweet note of birds, is at times the highway of the noisome pestilence and the destruction that wastes at noonday. The pang of suffering, the wail of death, the corruption of the sepulcher, refuse to countersign the testimony otherwise borne to a God who is all love. No, rather, in a thousand ways, do they indicate or assert the existence of estrangement between the Creator and the creature. With these anomalies.--these mysterious phenomena, alike in the material and the moral world, which of us, trusting alone to the light of nature, but would be forced to cry out in bewilderment, "Verily You are a God that hides Yourself?"\par \par When we turn from nature to other solutions, the darkness and perplexity only seem to thicken and deepen around us. We go in vain to heathen philosophers and their systems; and that, also, at the most refined era of the world, when the human intellect was under the most fav/orable conditions to grope its way to the highest spiritual verities. The brain which contrived in poetry the most fascinating creations of human imagination, or which compiled massive laws of wisdom which have guided and molded modern intellect and politics, manifested only failure here. The chisel which could embody its thoughts in breathing marble, and bequeath its wondrous conceptions as heirlooms to admiring ages alike in sculpture and architecture, could, in its conceptions of the Invisible Spirit, 0only carve the confession of its powerlessness on an Athenian pedestal, "To the unknown God!"\par \par When we go to the temples of heathen worship--with rare exceptions, they have a still gloomier and more perplexing response, in their bloody slaughterhouses, and reeking altars, and groaning victims. Whether it be the Moloch of Moab, or the Baal and Ashtaroth of Phoenicia; or Jove enthroned as King in Greek and Roman Pantheon, grasping Olympian thunderbolts; or Kali and Vishnu of Hindooism, or 1Thor and Odin of Scandinavia; we have, substantially, the same expression of their conceptions of the mysterious Invisible Abstraction worshiped as God--a Great Being, or Beings, with a reserve of power, absolute in their decrees, vindictive and implacable, the object of dread and dismay; few weapons in their infinite armory but what are whetted for retributive vengeance. Those heathen votaries, groping after the knowledge of a Supreme Ruler, had "neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His shape;" 2and their crude guesses at the dreadful reality, molded in imagination a living embodiment of terror, to whom judgment was no strange work.\par \par Or even if we turn (where we might have expected a more reliable and authoritative interpretation of the Oracle) to the Jewish "El Shaddai," "Jehovah," or "Elohim,"--was not this Infinite One invested, even by them, with similar awe? Is He not addressed by prophets, and sung of by psalmists, as "dreadful in His holy places," "The Great and dreadful 3One," "The Jealous One;" with "wrath kindled," "The fiery stream going forth before Him;" "Bowing the heavens, and coming down, with darkness under His feet;" sending avenging angels to the earth, to smite with sword and pestilence--this the invocation of His worshipers, "The Lord reigns, let the people TREMBLE."\par \par We listen to one revelation of Himself, that He dwells "in the thick darkness." A prior one, on that thick darkness being for the moment unrolled, was in "the sound of a trumpe4t, and the voice of words, which voice those who heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more." They beheld Him and feared Him, as "the Lord of hosts." At the march of this great God of armies, "the earth shook, the heavens dropped." "A fire goes before Him and burns up His enemies round about--His lightnings enlightened the world--the earth saw and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth." "Say unto God, how dr5eadful are You in Your works! through the greatness of Your power shall Your enemies submit themselves unto You."\par \par Even when we turn to the aid given to their conceptions of the Divine Personality, a mystic cloud covered the mercy-seat of their Temple, shrouding it from every eye but one, and that one could dare approach it only with blood. Well might Paul call this economy of the Theocratic nation, by the name of "the ministration of condemnation." A favored few of the favored people ha6d indeed penetrated that darkness. After the wind and earthquake and fire, they had heard "a still, small voice," and had been taught to sing, "How precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God," "My soul shall make her boast in the Lord," "O taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man that trusts in Him," "O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever."\par \par Through the discourses of their Prophets, and the hymns of their Psalmists, many had groped 7their way to some dim apprehensions of the Divine Fatherhood. Still, to the mass of the Jewish nation He was the Great Incomprehensible; answering them, as He did Job, "out of the whirlwind;" leading them to endorse the utterance of one of the friends of the same Patriarch, "Can you by searching find out God?"\par \par With many, moreover, who live under a better and brighter dispensation, are there not similar distorted views entertained of the nature of Jehovah? They think of Him as a mighty A8rchitect, who has piled infinite space with His handiwork--omnipotent, omniscient--dreadful in His holiness, inexorable in His justice, implacable in His vengeance. They have fully apprehended the partial revelation of Him as the punisher of sin, but they have failed to enter the "cleft" of the true Rock, and to gaze on the glorious complement of His character, as the Gracious and Merciful, the Father and the Friend. We repeat, that it is when within these clefts of the Rock of Ages, that latter and more 9gracious revelation, as in the case of Moses, is given.\par \par The paternal relation of Jehovah to His people is manifested in the Person of Him who came to our world the Incarnation of the Divine Spirituality, the Image and Representative of this Invisible God--the unveiler of the essential perfections of Deity. "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." He is Himself the articulate answer to the query of His impatient disciple, "Lord, show us the Father, and it suffices us"--"He: that has seen me," was the reply, "has seen the Father." As there had been a patriarchal, a legal, and a prophetic dispensation--so now Christ comes as the founder and exponent of a filial one. To take the significant opening words of the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews (not as they are rendered in our version, but as they have been rendered in the full force of the original), "God who at sundry times, and in diverse manners, spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days; spoken unto us by a Son." "In creation," says a writer, "He is a God above us; in the law He is a God against us; but in the Gospel He is Immanuel, a God with us, a God like us, a God for us."\par \par Most delightful surely and comforting is this theme of contemplation--Christ the Revealer of the Father. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Well may He be designated by this appropriate <term. For just as 'words' are the outward audible expression of silent invisible thought, so Christ is the expression of the Invisible God--the utterance and embodiment in human shape, of Him who revealed Himself in the dimness of an earlier dispensation as "secret," "wonderful," "incomprehensible."\par \par As the natural eye is dazzled by looking on the material sun in his noon-day splendor, and requires some medium through which to gaze on his brightness; so, no man can see the face, or compr=ehend the character of God, but through the Divine medium who came to our earth--the reflected "brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of His person." "No man has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him." The glorious train of the Divine attributes descended and filled the Temple of His body, and over the portico of that Temple stands inscribed in unmistakable characters, "God is love." The false conceptions of Him, as a Being dwe>lling in thick darkness, ought to be forever dispelled. What says the Apostle, as he points to Him who is "light, and with whom is no darkness at all"? "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."\par \par But this brings us more specifically to inquire, What is the character of this Great God, as manifested and reflected in the Son of His love?\par \par We have only? to track the divine footsteps of the Redeemer on earth, and (to use the Apostle's simile), there to behold "as in a mirror the glory of the Lord." What do we see? A Being, indeed, of infinite holiness--unsparing and uncompromising in His rebuke of iniquity, sternly denouncing sin in all its forms, driving with a scourge the sacrilegious traffickers from His Father's house, proclaiming the impending and certain doom awaiting incorrigible sinners, the workers of iniquity; even predicting by discourse and p@arable the dreadful verities of a judgment-day, and pronouncing everlasting doom on the impenitent and unbelieving; on all traitors to their trust, on all neglectors and squanderers of committed talents; thus repeating, in words not to be misunderstood, the very truth which fell on the ears of Moses in his Rock-cleft, as the sublime voice and vision were dying away--"And that will by no means clear the guilty."\par \par But yet, in combination with this, we are called to contemplate ONE of infinAite purity, beneficence, tenderness; whose delight was to feed the hungry, to heal the diseased, to help the helpless, to comfort the bereaved; feeling for them; weeping for them--in His parables, giving a welcome to the Prodigal; in His daily communion, never scorning a suppliant's request, or a penitent's tears; listening, even in His expiring agonies, to a cry for mercy from a felon at His side; accepting the widow's mite; making generous allowance for the lack of watchfulness at His own greatest crisiBs-hour on the part of trusted disciples; pardoning, with the tenderest of rebukes, the aggravated sin of a faithless follower; the prayer, trembling on His dying lips, of forgiveness for His murderers.\par \par Reader! take in, at a glance, this wide comprehensive view of the Savior's life and ministry, and in it you have a picture and impersonation of the character of God. "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men." "From henceforth," says Christ, pointing to Himself, "You know the Father, andC have seen Him." "I and My Father are one." Yes, there is God! Isaiah's names and titles seem to receive new appropriateness and significancy--"the everlasting FATHER," "Immanuel, God with us." You have obtained, in the person and utterances of that pure, spotless, and beneficent Being, a reply to the words of the Great Prophet--"To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness will you compare unto Him?"\par \par In the beautiful Sermon on the Mount, the Divine Teacher, in His spoken words, exDhibits before the mental eye of His hearers His Father's hand, in painting the lily, feeding the raven, and watching the sparrow's fall. But it has been well said--"When He would reveal the Father's heart, it is not by His words and discourses, but by His deeds and actions." That life of beneficence and goodness sets His own utterance in golden lettering, "GOD SO loved the world!" The very title of "Father," well near unknown under a former dispensation--how He dwells upon it!--how He delights to interweaEve it with parable and miracle, and intercessory prayer, and last agony, and first Resurrection-words! Well He knew the tender associations the name and image would call forth among the millions who pondered the story of His incarnation. He would have the sacred earthly relation transfused into the Heavenly. As He puts His people into the clefts of the Rock, and makes all the glory of His goodness to pass by; the proclamation is made, "My Father, and your Father, My God, and your God." He would have them Fto know and to feel, even in the house of their earthly tabernacle, that they are pacing a Father's halls--a dwelling frescoed and decorated with a Father's love!\par \par Although He himself, their Lord and Savior, is no longer visibly present to the eye of sense yet, having been thus embodied once in human form as the reflection of the Father's character, faith can follow the glorious Image within the veil; and with all the memories of that holy life in view from Bethlehem to Olivet, the key-nGote to the 'divinely taught' prayer can be struck with filial gladness and joy--"Our Father who is in Heaven, Hallowed be Your name!" It has been beautifully said, "In all our endeavors to raise our thoughts to God, the 'idea of Jesus' comes to our aid like the mystic ladder of the patriarch's dream, and they ascend and descend upon the Son of Man." Yes! thanks to the mystery of His holy incarnation for this full and perfect unfolding of the character of Jehovah.\par \par In the Old Testament diHspensation, the revelation of God in His Temple evokes from the lips of the worshiper the tremulous exclamation, "Woe is me, for I am undone, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." In the New, the experience of the beholder is this--"We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." In the Old Testament dispensation, the first miracle of the Viceregent of God was turning water into blood. In the New, the first miracle of the Divine Viceregent, theI Image and Representative of the Father, is turning water into wine. In the Old Testament dispensation, in answer to the question, "Who is this King of glory," the reply is heard, "The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle." In the New Testament dispensation, in answer to the same question, "Who is this King of glory?" there comes, in varied language, like an echo from the Rock of Ages, the response--thus embodied in the uninspired utterance of universal Christendom--"You are the King of gloryJ, O Christ, You are the everlasting Son of the Father!"\par \par Believer, exult more and more in this sublime revelation of God. We have already listened in the prologue of John's Gospel, to the Beloved disciple's testimony alike to the Deity and humanity of Messiah--"the Word was God" "the Word was made flesh." In the equally sublime prologue to his Epistles, when he speaks of "Him who was from the beginning," and of his own amazing privilege of gazing upon "the manifested Life," he proceeds tKo deliver a special message confided by this Great Revealer of the Father--"This then is the message which we have heard of Him, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." Strange that this message should be so often misinterpreted, that the beauties of holiness should be disfigured with the presentation of repulsive and distorted views of the character of Deity. The Romanism of the Middle Ages, which, in Church, and Cathedral, and wayside shrine, depicted the Divine Being (either in person or Lby the ministry of avenging angels), inflicting every device of material torture, seems, as we have already remarked, to be perpetuated in the minds and creed of many Protestants. Who can wonder that under such gloomy systems of misnamed 'orthodoxy,' the thought of God is a thought of servile terror, which dogs the footsteps like a hideous spectre, and makes the fondest longing of the aggrieved heart to have Him dethroned from His world.\par \par How different the entire scope of the Savior's teMaching. His whole object was, "to allure us to God; to win the world to an appreciation of the Father's excellence"--to unsay and repudiate this inversion of His own Word, an inversion which in the case of many might thus be rendered, "God is darkness, and in Him is no light at all." If that Savior's life was a life of love, full of all that was gentle and tender and good, 'Every feature,' He seems to say to us, 'that is attractive in Me, is to be found in the character of Him whom I represent. I am an ImNage of the Divine mind, reduced to dimensions capable of human comprehension; to know Me is to know the Father, "from henceforth you know Him, and have seen Him." By all I have done, by word or deed, it is He who is commending His love to you.'\par \par What a new force and beauty does there not seem to be, in the challenge of the great Apostle, when read in the light of God's paternal character to us and our filial relation to Him--"He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us allO, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things" (Rom. 8:32). 'After giving you,' he seems to say, 'such a pledge of His parental love, can you for a moment suppose that He will exact from you one unnecessary sacrifice, or refuse one really needed blessing within the compass of Omnipotence to bestow?' Every dark letter of mourning and lamentation and woe in the roll of Providence, thus becomes radiant with love.\par \par In seeing Jesus, you see the Father. In asking Jesus, you ask thPe Father. The names are interchangeable. "Whatever you shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it to you." Oh how near does all this bring the great God Almighty! How it represents Him, as regarding with discriminating love each member of His redeemed family; caring for their needs, sympathizing with their sorrows, bearing with their infirmities; loving them--we had almost said doating on them as a Father. How different from the heathen conception of their deities, living in the isolation of a volupQtuous calm; far removed from the concerns of earth, devoid of all personal interest in those from whom nevertheless they demanded cruel offerings, and over whom they were often represented as reveling in bloodthirsty malignity.\par \par "God in Christ," "God with us"--"with us," as truly as Jesus was with the anxious Nicodemus, or with the sisters of Bethany, or the widow at Nain, or the disciples tossed on their midnight sea, or the downcast mourners at Emmaus. "God with us"--brought down from Rthe regions of infinite abstraction--challenging our perfect confidence and trustful love--lifting the veil of the Holy of Holies, not to disclose altars drenched with blood, piled with instruments of torture, and resounding with groans of victims, but "to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His Temple."\par \par Children of God, and heirs of Glory! go, breathe your loved and time-worn litany, with the consciousness of a new and glorious meaning and trust--"O God, the Father of heaven! have mercy upon us, miserable sinners." O my gracious Father! I will measure You no longer by any low human standard. Let the kindness and gentleness and beneficence of Him who walked this earth as Your image, teach me evermore to repose unhesitatingly in the everlasting love of Your infinite heart. I will cling to this glorious shelter--in this Rock-cleft "I will lay me down in peace and sleep;" for God is my Father; and GOD IS LOVE!\par \par \par \cf1\fs23\par } Tonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 THE IMMUTABILITY OF CHRIST\par \par "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever."\par \endash Hebrews 13:8\par \par "Build not your nest on any tree of earth, seeing God has sold the forest to Death. But rather soar upwards to the sure and immutable refuge in the Clefts of the Rock." \endash Samuel Rutherford.\par \pUar "What a blessing that the Anchor of our love is firmly fixed beneath the cross of Christ; for such a friendship is sure and lasting, not merely held fast by the 'silver cord of life,' which may be snapped in a moment, but embedded in the cleft of the Rock forever." \endash Hedley\par \par It is the tritest of sayings that everything here is given to change. If the calm blue sky above us were a mirror, what a scene of vicissitude would it reflect! The natural fabric of the world is a Vmonument of mutability. Its aqueous and igneous rocks--strata piled on strata--are so many chapters written on stone tablets, registering successive revolutions. Hill and valley contain in many cases the repositories of extinct races and forms, animal and vegetable--a shelved museum of sepulchered generations. Where the hum of cities now ascends, yes, where mountains raise their heads, the murmur of old ocean once was heard. In marine deposits she has left the unmistakable trace of her footsteps. While onW the other hand forests once grew, and living creatures roamed, where now we see a waste of waters, and listen only to the boom of the sounding billows.\par \par Passing from the world's material to its historical annals. These are one long record of change. Nation has succeeded nation, dynasty has succeeded dynasty, as wave follows wave! Excavators in the old kingdoms, alike of East and West, have dragged buried capitals from the tomb of ages. The axe and shovel have disclosed streets grooved wXith the wheels of chariots, and adorned on either side with the winged symbols of now vanished power. The owl screeches and the jackal howls amid the tenantless wastes of Babylon. The fisherman spreads his net where the green waves laved the Palaces of Tyre. Earth's history and that of its peoples is a humiliating alternation of rise and fall. There has been a constant weaving and unweaving of the web of nations. The magnificent kingdom of Alexander is no sooner made, than it is dismembered and partitioneYd. The Roman eagle for centuries wings its magnificent flight over a prostrate world; but at last it falls with wings collapsed, and other birds of evil omen from the forests and swamps of northern Europe build their nests in the eaves of the capital. In our own time, who can predict for one brief year what the destinies of contemporary nations may be? what thrones may rock, what scepters may tremble or fall from the feeble hands that grasp them!\par \par If we turn from nations past and presentZ to the record of individual history, how sadly do we see the same vicissitude written, from the smiles at the birth to the tears at the death. Who that has lived for half the threescore and ten but can bear witness? Who that has measured out the fourscore, but can bear more emphatic testimony still? We go back to revisit the haunts consecrated by the remembrances of youth--How changed and metamorphosed often are its most treasured memorials! In vain we search for the ancestral trees under whose shadow we[ sat, or the pendent willows that used to kiss the passing rivulet. Strange faces appear at the windows; other hands till the soil; other worshipers crowd the pews of the village church, and another voice speaks from its pulpit. The group that was used to gather under the paternal roof--how the inevitable wave of change has swept over and dispersed it! Many may vividly recall the day--the hour, when that full circle that was used to gather round the hearth was first broken; that day when you stood by the \shore and waved the last farewell to a departing brother, who in sailing to a distant land left the first empty chair behind him. Alas! the first instalment of other inroads, other changes yet to follow. Some can speak of more sacred breaches--these hearths pillaged of beloved tenants called to set sail to further shores.\par \par And if not of their own circles, cannot all tell, how the friends of their youth, the companions of their boyhood, the associates of their manhood, shipload after ship]load have sailed from the shores of time, bound for "the silent land"--that land from whose destination no voyager, no traveler returns. Death is ever busy at work reaping the green corn, as well as gathering in the yellow sheaves. Sepulchers seem to lie along our path. Year by year well-known faces are missed, in the market, the street, the sanctuary. And even if these friends of bygone times are spared, how changed from what many remember them! The once buoyant youth now with silvered hair and furrowed ^brow; the once athletic frame now stooping with the load of years; the once clear and vigorous intellect now clouded and impaired--memory sharing in the wreck of the crumbling outer tabernacle--nature lapsing into her second childhood!\par \par Some may have to recount changes sadder and more sorrowful still than bereavement--breaches in affection; the friendships of early life cooled and alienated; an unmeant word or unmeant deed undoing and obliterating years of communion; the door rudely clos_ed where the heart has lavished its best stores of kindness. What shall we say of human hopes that have been blighted, human joys that have evaporated like a snow-wreath! golden harvests which the flood has swept away just at the reaping--rock-pillars that have turned out to be sand-pillars; flowers that have drooped, and paled, and died, before summer began--what promised to be a brilliant sunset, only a few fitful pulsations of quivering light, and then, a dull watery setting!\par \par And not` to pursue these reflections, we need go no farther than examine our own individual minds, our tastes, feelings, opinions, course of life, daily associations and occupations. How constantly changing! The man of fifty is no more like the child or youth, than the oak of half a century is like the sapling or acorn from which it sprang. Molded by ten thousand influences either for good or for evil, through a succession of years, we may almost fail to recognize our former selves!\par \par Our spirituaal history too, how vacillating!--strong one hour, weaklings the next. On our Carmel heights today; under our juniper trees tomorrow--today we fancy ourselves Asahels, swift of foot; tomorrow "unstable as water!"\par \par Yes! Human life, outwardly, inwardly, is a "shifting spectacle;" so says the apostle of it. He compares it to the moving scenes or characters in the old Grecian theaters--"the fashion" (or the drama) "of this world, passes away." Over the "yesterday" of the past, and the "todayb" of the present, the clouds of heaven are chasing one another. The waves of its seething, restless sea, are tossing and tumbling in fretful disquietude. And whether these changes have been from prosperity to adversity--or adversity to prosperity; converting life, with some, into a golden viaduct, with others, into "a bridge of sighs," they conduct alike to the one final goal. The path of sorrow as well as the path of glory "leads but to the grave."\par \par Oh! amid this heaving ocean of vicisscitude--amid severed friendships and buried loves--amid these crude heart-tearings of human caprice and surging passion, is there no spot whereon we can plant our foot--no rock-cleft where the wandering, tempest-tossed dove can fold its weary wing and sink in repose?\par \par This brings us from the mutable to consider the Immutable.\par \par The words which head this chapter, proclaim the unchanging love of Christ--an Immutability--arising (as has already been fully considered in previdous chapters), out of the Infinite perfection of His own Infinite Being, as "God over all, blessed forever," and yet as "Immanuel, God with us." What He was in the Yesterday of the eternal past when dwelling in the bosom of the Father, He continued at the time of His incarnation, when still, as God, in very deed He dwelt with men on the earth and He shall continue to be forever! We are reminded of some gigantic Alpine peak unsealed and unscalable by human footstep--covered summer and winter with virgin sneow. It seems to look down with kingly demeanor on the angry elements beneath. While these are holding wild riot, it has not a jewel in its icy crown displaced--not a ruffle made in its glistening mantle--not a wrinkle on its everlasting brow. Emblem of the Rock of Ages. Though in His human nature--as the Man of Sorrows--the Surety and Representative of the fallen, furrowed with flood and tempest--"His Visage more marred than any man's, and His form more than the sons of men,"--in the calm glory of His adofrable Godhead He is "without variableness or shadow of turning." Amid the alterations in earth's material framework, the convulsions of nations, the fluctuations of human thought and feeling, He remains immutably the same. The march of events works no change in Him--"The Lord sits upon (yes above) the water-floods--yes, the Lord sits King forever!" Blessed truth! the unchangeableness of Jehovah-Jesus--"O come, let us sing unto the Lord--let us make a joyful noise unto the Rock of our salvation."\par \parg Specially comforting is it for us to connect the Savior of the present, with the Savior who lived and loved of old, in the days of His humiliation--to go the round of His deeds of mercy; to cull from gospel story all His words of encouragement, His sayings as well as His doings, and transfer their perpetual unchanging solace to ourselves! Did He invite the weary? Did He give the assurance that as the Good Shepherd He came to seek the lost--that as the Son of Man He had power on earth to forgive hsins? Did He dry the tears of disconsolate mourners by proclaiming Himself as the Resurrection and the Life? In sealing up the vision and prophecy, did He give, as His last utterance to the Church, the precious invitation, "Whoever will, let him take of the water of life freely?" Each of these sayings, and many more, come to us this day with the same reality and freshness as when they first welled forth from these lips of love and tenderness.\par \par Other declarations of earth's wisest and greiatest may have lost their power and meaning--but Christ's sayings are forever true and relevant. Other highways may be broken up by the lapse of ages--but this highway of golden words and promises and deeds remains unaltered. Other fitful gleams of light have been cast on the Christian's dungeon-wall for a few moments and then vanished--but these, like Vestal fires, are to burn on forever.\par \par Believer, amid the fitfulness and uncertainty of earth and earthly things, come and enter into thijs Rock-cleft of a Savior's unchanging faithfulness. "Trust not in man, nor in the son of man, in whom is no help."\par \par It may be that some who read these pages may have had, or may be even now having, painful personal proof of that mutability, uncertainty, evanescence and transitoriness, of which we have spoken. You may have felt by experience, how often those joys, which like the bright berries in the summer woods are beautiful to the eye, prove bitter to the taste; how often the loveliestk cloud in the life-sky condenses at last into a shower and then falls; how the loveliest rainbow-hue dissolves; how riches take to themselves wings and flee away; capricious fortune forsaking, often just when the golden dream seems most surely realized! But "HE has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you."\par \par Have you never observed, that while in the course of a long succession of years the scenery on a river's bank may be changed, the river itself remains the same? Formerly it was ulsed, it may be, to flow through secluded woods--its waters, murmuring by forest glades, where the wild deer stole down on the silent eve undisturbed by human step. Now hives of industry are lining its course; ponderous wheels are revolving, and the clang of hammers are resounding, where the woodman's axe alone was formerly heard. But the river itself, unchanged and unchangeable, carries its unfailing tributary-torrent to the main.\par \par So it is with Him who is as "the River of God." The eartmhly valley through which that river flows is a scene of change. But onward it rolls its own glorious volume of everlasting love. "There is a river the streams whereof make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved!" "Behold," says the same Immutable One, in another metaphor, "I have engraved you on the palms of My hands." Not on the mountains, colossal as they are, for they shall depart; on no leaf of nature's vast volume, nfor the last fires shall scorch them; not on blazing sun, for he shall grow dim with age; or on glorious heavens, for they shall be folded together as a scroll. But on the hand which made the worlds, the hand which was transfixed on Calvary, the hand of might and love--I have engraved you there. No corroding power can efface the writing, obliterate the name--you are Mine now, and Mine forever!\par \par AGED Christian, old inhabitant of the forest, the frosts of winter silvering your branches--yoou who feel yourself left alone; too advanced in life to make new friendships, and none, even if you formed them, that could fill the blank of old ones--blessed, we say for you, with your own years failing, your own strength impaired, your loved ones taken from your side, to lift your tearful eye on the Great Unchanging, and to say, amid these slanting shadows, and stripped boughs, and wintry skies--"But YOU--oh, YOU, are the same, and Your years shall not fail!"\par \par DESPONDING Christian (itp may be erring and backsliding one), you who feel clouds and darkness dimming the brightness of former days, cast down because of your coldness and deadness. Past or recent sin may have covered you with shame and sorrow. You may, like the disciples, have slept glorious opportunities away. You may be wondering if Christ can still cast on you, as once He did, a pitying eye. Your mournful soliloquy and pensive musing is this--"Surely my way is hidden from the Lord!" Be comforted. "If we believe not, He abideqs faithful. He cannot deny Himself." You may have changed towards Him--but He is unchanged towards you. The clouds may intervene, but the unchanging Sun shines the same as ever in the skies. Looking away from your own fluctuating self, you may revert with chastened confidence to the day of your spiritual espousals, when you knew and felt that He loved you; and then take courage in the conviction that His love is unchanged, that it can admit of no diminishing nor decay.\par \par BEREAVED Christiarn, you who have been called more specially to experience the sorrows of life, how consolatory to know that there is one prop that cannot give way, one Friend beyond the reach of vicissitude, who is working out your soul's everlasting well-being in His own calm world, far above and beyond the heavings and convulsions of ours. One who is the same amid storm and sunshine, births and deaths, marriage peals and funeral knells--of whom you can say, amid the wreck of all human confidences, "The Lord lives, and bslessed be MY ROCK!"\par \par No more. When, we ask, is the thought of the immutability of Christ most precious to you? Is it not just when your own heart and your own flesh are fainting and failing--when lover and friend are put far from you, and your acquaintance into darkness? Like trees which the winds of autumn have stripped of their leaves, you are led, in the very wrestling with these storms, to moor your roots firmer and faster and deeper in the Rock of Ages! You can tell alike as your extperience and your confidence\endash\par "Our lives are like the shadows\par On sunny hills that lie,\par Or flowers which deck the meadows\par That blossom but to die.\par \par A sleep, a dream, a story,\par By strangers quickly told;\par An evanescent glory\par Of things that soon grow old.\par \par But You--THE ROCK OF AGES\par For evermore have been;\par What time the tempest rages\par Our dwelling-place serene."\par \par Yes, sheltered in these clefts, you can feel the glad assurance, that no desolating wave which has swept away your earthly moorings, can ever separate you from the love of Christ. You can see the rainbow of the covenant resting majestically on the stormy billows, and read on its luminous scroll of ruby and emerald and gold the glorious superscription--"I am the Lord, I do not change."\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } vharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 THE SYMPATHY OF JESUS\par \par "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin." \endash Hebrews 4:15\par \par "This happiness Christ gives to all His--that as a Savior He once suffered for them, and that as a Friend He always suffers with wthem." \endash South, 1633.\par \par 0 Sirs! there is in Jesus something proportionable to all the straits, necessities, and desires of His poor people." \endash Thomas Brooks, 1635.\par \par "Jesus is the great sympathetic nerve of the Church, over which all the oppressions and sufferings of His people distinctly pass. Surveying this scene of overtoiled labor, and sleepless anxiety, and wasting solicitude, in which mortals are embroiled, the voice of Jesus--the Friend of man--the tendxer Sympathizer with human woe, is heard rising in tones of the kindest compassion." \endash Harris.\par \par The Rock Christ--the Rock of Deity--the Rock high above the lower valley--mantled in clouds, as if veiled with cherub's wings; inaccessible to human footstep--its glorious summits the privileged home of angels. What affinity can there be between this Mighty God and puny man--between Omnipotence and weakness--Deity and dust?\par \par Affinity, yes more than affinity there is! Thayt Rock, whose top, like the Patriarch's ladder, reaches to heaven, has its base on the earth. The Great Redeemer, as we have already seen, combines the attributes of Godhead with the attributes and characteristics of a true and veritable humanity. To one of the most beautiful features of that humanity--the divine Sympathy of Jesus--this new Rock-cleft introduces us.\par \par Among the heart's most sacred and hallowed emotions, none is surely more hallowed than Sympathy. In these dependent naturezs of ours, who, in the season of need has not longed for it--and when it comes, has not welcomed it like the presence of a ministering angel? Others working with us, feeling for us--sharing our toils, helping us to carry our burdens; entering into our hopes, our joys, our sorrows; to see the responsive tear glistening in the eye--all this is a mighty strengthener and sustainer amid the vicissitudes of chequered life.\par \par The lonely fisherman on the stormy sea has his midnight of weariness, {and it may be of peril; is charmed, as he glances towards the light gleaming in the hut on the shore, and thinks of the wakeful vigils of the loving hearts within. The soldier in his camp under the starry heavens, thousands of miles intervening between him and his native soil, is cheered by the very tread of the sentinel, or the breathing of the slumbering forms around him--or he remembers the far-off home and those whose sympathetic spirits are with him--and the thought is like cold water to a thirsty so|ul. The martyr at the stake has been often nerved for endurance by the whisper of "Courage, brother!" from the fellow-victim at his side. How the Great Apostle in his Roman dungeon--when he was "such an one as Paul the aged" was cheered by the visits of congenial friends, such as Timothy and Onesiphorus! How touchingly does the illustrious captive invoke God's richest benedictions on the latter and on his household, for "often refreshing him and not being ashamed of his chain."\par \par If human} sympathy be thus gladdening and grateful, what must be the pure--exalted--sinless--unselfish Sympathy emanating from the heart of the Great Brother-Man? It is of this, we shall now speak; and taking the words which head this chapter to lead our thoughts, let us consider these two points embraced in them--The sympathy of Jesus, the Great High Priest of His Church; and the one exceptional characteristic here mentioned, that, "Though in all points tempted as we are"--it was "Yet without sin."\par \par ~ Genuine Sympathy requires that there be an identity, or at all events a similarity of nature, between him who sympathizes and the object of sympathy.\par \par The holy Angel, when he sees the children of fallen humanity in sorrow, may pity; but he cannot sympathize with them. Why? Because he never himself shed a tear; his nature never felt pang of trial, or assault of temptation. We see the worm writhing on the ground--we know it is in agony--suffering pain. We pity it--but we cannot sympathize with it. Why? because it is in a different scale of being.\par \par Even in the case of the human family, in their condolence with one another--the finer elements of sympathy are lacking, unless they have passed through the same school of experience. Look at the BEGGAR on the street--the man or woman in ragged tatters, with half-naked children in their arms, singing for a livelihood from door to door. Who, in the majority of instances, are found most ready to respond to the appeal for support? Observation will prove, that it is not the rich, not even the middle class; most frequently it is the poor themselves. We have often marked such charity willingly doled out by the laborer, returning from his place of toil at meal-hour, in workman's attire--one who perhaps himself had known the bitter blast of adversity--what it is to have closed factory doors and silent shuttles, and at whose blackened fires grim poverty once sat--his sympathy arises out of identity of experience with the sufferers.\par \par The BEREAVED tell the story of their swept and desolated home to a friend--a friend too, it may be, full to overflowing with natural feeling. He may listen with heartfelt emotion to all they have to say--but he has never laid a loved one in the grave--death has never invaded his dwelling--the overwhelming wave of bereavement has never left traces of desolation on his soul. Another comes in. He may not have the same natural strong emotions or sensibilities. But he has consigned treasure after treasure to "the narrow house"--he has himself waded through the deep waters--the woes of others have been traced and chiseled in his own heart of hearts; and consequently the very deeps of his being are stirred. More than one endorsed letter has been sent, in recent years, by our beloved Queen, to those in high places who have been called to exchange crowns and coronets for weeds of mourning. These, under any circumstances, would have been a grateful and prized expression of royal condolence. But how much more touchingly and tenderly such utterances came home to those bleeding hearts, when the writing, within its deep border, was known to be blotted with the tears of kindred widowhood!\par \par The same remark may be made with reference to PREACHING. How often do we hear trial dwelt upon in our pulpits by the lips of youth--young (and nevertheless faithful) servants of their heavenly Master, who expatiate on the deathbed, the grave, the broken heart, the wilderness-world, earth "vanity and vexation of spirit." But yet (say as they will), they have only adopted the phraseology of others--they speak from no experience--they believe it all to be true, but they have never felt it to be true. Their words therefore come home with little power; they may even grate upon the ear, as being, in the lips of the declaimers, unnatural and inappropriate. But bring some aged, venerable man--some old veteran in the school of trial, whose memory and soul are ploughed and furrowed with deep scars; whose friends in the unseen world number as many as in this--Listen to him, as he pours oil and wine into the mourner's bosom! How pulse beats responsive to pulse, and heart to heart. He has been "touched with a fellow-feeling," for he has been in all respects tried even as they. He has been in the furnace himself; the arrow of comfort and sympathy comes feathered from his own bosom; and when sorrow and trial are the theme of his preaching, he speaks feelingly, because he feels deeply.\par \par All this has its loftiest exemplification in the sublime sympathy of the Son of God. He is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities" Why? Because "He has been tempted in every way, just as we are." His is a deep, yearning, real sympathy arising out of His true and real humanity. His was not an angel-life. He was not, as many falsely picture Him, half Angel, half God--looking down on a fallen world from the far distant heights of His heavenly throne. But He descended, and walked in the midst of it, pitching His tent (as we have seen) among its families--"He did not take on Himself the nature of Angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham." The Great Physician lived in the world's hospital. He did not write out His cures in His remote dwelling in the skies, refusing to come into personal contact with the patients. He walked its every ward. With His own hand He felt the fevered pulses; His own eyes gazed on the sufferer's tears. He stood not by the fiery furnace as a spectator, but there was one in it "like the Son of God."\par \par To leave us the less doubt as to His capacity for entering into the feelings and sorrows of His people; note His own longing after sympathy. In the Garden of Gethsemane He could not pray the prayer of His agony without it--"Sit here, while I go and pray yonder." How cherished to Him was the family home of Bethany, just because He could there pour out the tale of His own sorrows in the ears of congenial human friends. Even at the last scene of all, how sustained He was by human presence! "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene." Oh blessed thought! He knows our frame; for He had that frame Himself. "Behold the Man!" Every heart-throb you feel evokes a kindred pulsation in the bosom of the Prince of Sufferers; for "He that sanctifies, and those who are sanctified, are all of one (nature)."\par \par But let us advert to one or two special characteristics.\par \par (1.) It is a PRESENT sympathy. He IS touched with a feeling of our infirmities. "I know their sorrows"--not, 'I have known them once, but have now forgotten them in My state of glorification; I once bore this frame of yours, but the human nature is merged in the divine.' No. "I AM He who lives."\par \par "Though now ascended up on high,\par He bends on earth a brother's eye;\par Partaker of the human name,\par He knows the frailty of our frame.\par \par "Our fellow-sufferer yet retains\par A fellow-feeling of our pains;\par And still remembers in the skies\par His tears, His agonies, and cries."\par \par (2.) Another characteristic is that of INTENSITY. Relationship is one of the elements which generates and intensifies sympathy. A man feels for the sufferings of a fellow-man--but if that sufferer be a relative, connected by ties of blood or affection, how much deeper the emotion.\par \par A stranger standing on the pier, seeing a child or youth struggling in the waves, would feel an uncontrollable impulse to rush to its rescue. If a swimmer, he would plunge into the sea, and cleaving his way through the surge, would make every effort to snatch the child from a watery grave. But what would be his feelings in comparison with those of her, who, from the same spot, beheld in that drowning one the child of her bosom? The pity of the former would be coldness itself in comparison with her combined emotions of anguish and tenderness.\par \par The dwellers in the wild valley of Dauphiny, who saw the eagle bearing the infant in its talons to the lofty rock, were moved with horror at the scene, and made several brave efforts to effect a rescue. But it was the mother alone, whose love bore her with fleet foot from crag to crag, until reaching the perilous crag, she was in time to clasp the living captive to her bosom, and say--"This my child was dead and is alive again, it was lost and is found." Such is the intensity and tenderness of the love and sympathy of Jesus, the "living Kinsman"--He who is Parent, Friend, Brother, all in one. "Lord, behold he whom You love is sick"--"Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him"--"As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you."\par \par (3.) The sympathy of Christ is a COMPREHENSIVE and PARTICULAR sympathy--embracing not only all His Church but every individual member of it. It takes in the whole range of human infirmities; outward troubles, inward perplexities, unspoken griefs with which a stranger dare not meddle. No trial, no pang, no tear, escapes His eye. With a microscopic power "He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust," as if we stood alone in the world, and individually engrossed all His solicitudes. A grain of sand, almost imperceptible, affects the tender organ of sight. This is the Bible emblem of the divine-human sympathy--"He that touches you, touches the pupil of His eye."\par \par How varied were the methods by which Jesus, when on earth, expressed His sympathetic love and thoughtful compassion! Not to rehearse familiar instances already given, see how, in order to dispel their misgivings, He joins the two disconsolate followers on the way to Emmaus, how He appoints a special meeting to clear up the doubts of Thomas. His last earthly thought on the cross is providing a home for a mother and a disciple--"Woman, behold your Son!--Son, behold your Mother!"\par \par (4.) The sympathy of the Divine Redeemer was ACTIVE--not a mere emotion evaporating in sentimental feeling; the casket without the jewel. There are those who can be touched by reading the pages of a romance, who shed tears over the columns of a newspaper; yet who, though thus able to indulge in fictitious griefs, stretch out no hand of substantial support to the needy; who, like Priest and Levite in the parable, can see a wounded fellow-being, and leave him half dead.\par \par Not so Christ--He is the world's good Samaritan, binding up the wounds of aching humanity. He was sent to "heal the brokenhearted;" and nobly did He fulfill His commission--"Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I GO that I may awake him out of sleep." The Divine Consoler never mocked the children of sorrow with a stone when they asked for bread--saying, in the cold heartlessness of the mere sentimentalist, "Depart in peace, be warmed and filled." He "went about doing good."\par \par (5.) His was, moreover, an ABIDING sympathy. The world's sympathy is often short-lived. It cannot penetrate the depths and recesses of the smitten heart. It cannot make allowances for intense grief. It offers its tribute of condolence at the moment; but if the heart-wounds remain unhealed, it has its own harsh verdict on inordinate sorrow. The ripples in the water where some treasured bark has gone down, have closed again; the world's vessels cross and recross the spot, but no vestige, no legend of the catastrophe is left on the unstable element. Sorrowful anniversaries come back, but they are all unnoted, save by the bereft one, who has learned to lock up these sacred griefs and to weep alone. There is ONE, abiding, unchanging Sympathizer--the Immutable Savior! The moss may gather over the tombstone, and almost obliterate the lettering--but no corroding hand of time or of years\endash\par "Can e'er efface us from His heart,\par Or make His love decay."\par \par The sympathy of the dearest earthly friend may be evanescent; brother may be estranged from brother, sister from sister--friend from friend. But "there is a Friend that sticks closer than a brother."\par \par We can do little more than notice, in closing, the 'exceptional clause' in the Apostle's statement, that this Great High Priest, touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and tempted in all points even as we are, was "yet without sin."\par \par Does not this one sentence, however, neutralize, or at least render much inappropriate and inapplicable, of what we have already said? If perfectly sinless, how could He be tempted? and if not tempted, how could He feel? If perfectly sinless, how could He enter into the most poignant part of our woes, the assaults of corruption, the wiles of the Great Adversary?\par \par We must be careful to guard with jealousy this precious jewel in the Savior's humanity, His "IMPECCABILITY." He was "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." He could utter the unanswerable challenge, "Who of you convinces Me of sin?" There was no affinity in His nature with sin or temptation. Apply the lighted torch to the loaded cannon, it will at once give out its voice of thunder because loaded with the explosive element. But, apply the fuse to that same piece of artillery in which the fulminating ingredients are not; it will remain mute and harmless as the rocks and stones around--and the timid bird can nestle safely in its barrel.\par \par So it was with the sinless nature of Christ. Temptation, in His case, was the lighted torch applied to the uncharged, unloaded cannon. Ignition was impossible; for affinity there was none between the Tempted and the Tempter.\par \par But though incapable of sin, and incapable of temptation in the sense of being overcome by it, He was not incapable of suffering by it. "He SUFFERED, being tempted." The very holiness of His nature--the very recoil of His spotless soul from evil--made the presence of sin, and of temptation, the cause of unutterable anguish. And these same refined sensibilities impart to Him now, a livelier and acuter sympathy for those who are tempted; just as the purer the glass, or the brighter the metal, the more visibly are they sullied if breathed upon.\par \par Though the Prince of this world came and found nothing in Him--though no device could drag Him from His steadfastness--though the sinless One rolled back wave on wave of temptation, and sent the Adversary away, thwarted among his legions of darkness; did He not feel, with a shrinking and sensitiveness all His own, that Tempter's presence and power? Hear the testimony and exclamation of His own lips--"Now is My soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour, but for this cause I came unto this hour."\par \par When He was standing in meek, silent majesty in Pilate's Judgment-Hall--the Lamb speechless before His shearers--Incarnate Truth in the midst of error, impiety, and blasphemy--or on the cross, while listening to the cruel taunt and ribald jest of the passers-by--did He feel nothing? Though breathed in silence, here is His prophetic experience\endash\par "My enemies surround Me like a herd of bulls;\par fierce bulls of Bashan have hemmed Me in!\par Like roaring lions attacking their prey,\par they come at Me with open mouths.\par My life is poured out like water,\par and all My bones are out of joint.\par My heart is like wax,\par melting within Me.\par My strength has dried up like sunbaked clay.\par My tongue sticks to the roof of My mouth.\par You have laid Me in the dust and left me for dead.\par My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs;\par an evil gang closes in on Me.\par They have pierced My hands and feet.\par I can count every bone in My body.\par My enemies stare at Me and gloat.\par They divide My clothes among themselves\par and throw dice for My garments.\par O Lord, do not stay away!\par You are my strength; come quickly to My aid!\par Rescue Me from a violent death;\par spare My precious life from these dogs.\par Snatch Me from the lions' jaws,\par and from the horns of these wild oxen."\par Psalm 22:12-21\par \par Believe it--it is not a sinful nature, or sinful practice, that makes us feel a deeper sympathy with our fellow-sinners. As it has been well observed, when David was living in scandalous and unrepented of sin--when his conscience was blunted, and prayer restrained before God; then he had no sympathy--no mercy for the cruel author of a hypothetical case of violence and wrong. When Nathan told him the story-parable about the ewe-lamb--"The man that has done this," said David, "shall surely die." Sin hardens the heart; blunts the sensibilities. It is the highest and purest specimens of humanity who are the kindest, best, most tender. What, then, must it be with the Great Ideal of all excellence; the sinless God-man Mediator?\par \par Yes! if I wish a true, perfect sympathizer, I look to Him, who, while He had (and He has at this moment) a real humanity, is, at the same time, "the Holy One of God"--"tempted," "yet without sin;" and exult in the Prophet's words of comfort--all the more because of His infinite purity--"A Man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."\par  \par Reader, do you know what it is to take refuge in this glorious Rock-cleft, the Sympathy of Jesus? There are crisis-hours in our lives when more especially we need strong support--when, like Jacob at Bethel, we are all alone in a desolate place--the sun of our earthly happiness set, and our summer friends gone. Or like John, as he wandered in Patmos, the sole survivor of the Apostolic band, old fellow-disciples and companions removed--like a tree left solitary in the forest. These are the times when the Savior delights to come, showing us the ladder which connects the pillow of stones and the weary sleeper with the heights of heaven--or, as in the case of the lonely exile of the Aegean Sea, raising us from our prostrate condition, and whispering in our ears His own gentle accents of reassuring peace! It is when the tempest is fiercest, we know the preciousness of such a Refuge--"When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to THE ROCK THAT IS HIGHER THAN I!"\par \par \par \cf1\fs23\par } Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 THE TENDERNESS OF JESUS\par \par "A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out." Isaiah 42:3\par \par "He will feed His flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in His arms, holding them close to His heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young." Isaiah 40:11\par \par "He has never yet put out a dim candle that was lighted at the Sun of Righteousness." \endash Charnock, 1628.\par \par "Upon Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, and was adorned with the acclamations of a King and a God, He wet the Palms with His tears, sweeter than the drops of manna, or the little pearls of heaven that descended upon Mount Hermon; weeping, in the midst of His triumph, over obstinate, perishing, and malicious Jerusalem." \endash Jeremy Taylor, 1613.\par \par "When our heart does but relent, His melts; when our eye merely pities, His affections yearn. How many vices and defects of ours does He smother, how many indignities does He pass by; and how many affronts does He put up with at our hands, because His love is invincible." \endash South, 1633.\par \par "Shall not the Redeemer's tears move you? They signify the sincerity of His love and pity--the truth and tenderness of His compassion. His tears were the natural genuine expressions of genuine beneficence and pity." \endash John Howe, 1630.\par \par The TENDERNESS OF JESUS is a Rock-cleft, which, though nearly allied to that spoken of in our last, seems to suggest and to claim a special consideration.\par \par A writer has remarked, that the only occasion during our Lord's public ministry, on which He laid claim to any human excellency, was when He uttered the words recorded in Matthew's Gospel--"I am meek and lowly in heart." This is not the character which the world values. These are rather some of its self-laudations, its loudest trumpet-blasts--'I am great, I am rich, I am courageous, I am cultured, I am learned.' It does obeisance to "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power." As we had occasion to note in a previous chapter, the old Pagan qualities eulogized and canonized were bravery, manliness, heroism, and the like. Humility, meekness and gentleness were unknown in their calendar of virtues. It was reserved for the Prince of Peace to claim as His special characteristic that He cast away no bruised reeds--that He trampled out no smoking flax!\par \par What a contrast here, also, with other religious teachers, in the weapons employed for the propagation of their tenets. Fire, and sword, and scimitar, have in most instances paved the way for spiritual conquest. Indeed, unlike their Master, even the best of His own Apostolic band had no milder method to suggest in dealing with schismatics. In imitation of the Fiery Prophet, they would have called down lightning-bolts from Heaven on the churlish Samaritans. Peter's unsheathed sword would have dealt deathly vengeance on the High Priest's Servant. But in both cases there was an instantaneous rebuke from the tender lips of their Lord--"The Son of Man came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them." "Put up again your sword into his place, for all those who take the sword shall perish with the sword."\par \par "He had no curses," says an eloquent divine, "for His foes--no blows for His enemies. Such was His gentleness, that when He might have shaken the earth and rocked the thrones of tyrants, and made every idol-god totter from its blood-stained throne, He put forth no such physical power, but still stood with melting heart and tearful eyes, inviting sinners to come to Him; using no lash but His love--no battle-axe and weapon of war but His grace."\par \par In dwelling for a little on the Gentleness and Tenderness of Jesus, let us begin by referring to one or two Old Testament prophetical intimations regarding this special feature in the character of the predicted Messiah. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me," said Isaiah, "because He has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the meek. He has sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted." "You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat."\par \par Oriental kings and potentates of old delighted in OSTENTATION and DISPLAY. Solomon rode in his cedar chariot, with his body-guard running in glittering attire by his side, their hair covered with dust of gold. But see how prophecy describes this Greater than Solomon, as He goes forth in triumphal state--"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem--behold, your King comes unto you--He is just, and having salvation; LOWLY, and riding upon an donkey, and upon a colt the foal of an donkey." TENDERNESS was the sweet fragrance that was to exude from every leaf and blossom of the Stem of Jesse--"He shall grow up before him as a tender plant." The watchmen in the Canticles, when they met the dejected spouse, wounded her and tore off her veil. When she met her Lord, she receives no angry word--no look of upbraiding. "He shall deliver the needy when he cries--the poor also, and him that has no helper." "You are fairer than the children of men; grace (graciousness, tenderness) is poured into Your lips."\par \par Passing from prophecy to its fulfillment; the whole ministry of Jesus on earth was the picture of which these are the framework. The opening act of that ministry is the proclamation of His tenderness. The earliest public utterances of a king or statesman are generally taken as indicative of the policy and principles which are to regulate his future career. How beautifully was the initial text He Himself selected in the synagogue at Nazareth, illustrated by a life and example of gentleness and love. Not, like the manifesto of many public men, misrepresented through fickleness and caprice, or the delirium of success--their promised acts and deeds of generosity and benignity lapsing into coldness, and selfishness, and austerity. As we watch the crowds of helpless and diseased, sick and fevered, orphaned, friendless, and dying, who thronged the way wherever He went, we see how the tenderness of His words was endorsed and countersigned by His equally tender deeds.\par \par Let us go and stand by that PORCH OF MERCY and witness the throng, as severally, they approach with their tale of anxiety and perplexity--sorrow and sin.\par \par Here is one! He comes by night. When the evening shadows have closed around Jerusalem, and no unkindly human eye is able to track his footsteps, he sneaks to those gates of compassion. His soul is fevered and restless. He is sick at heart with the worn-out conventional forms of Judaism, and longing to hear of the principles of the new Kingdom. How tenderly does the Great Teacher listen to the questions of this anxious inquirer, in the anguish of his first convictions, and unfold to him the wondrous story of God's everlasting love!\par \par Here is another! An avaricious tax-gatherer; one who, in all probability, in common with the class to which he belonged, had preyed upon widows and orphans in extorting his unscrupulous gains; one, moreover, who, on account of his extortionate calling, we may well believe had seldom or ever listened to a kind or generous word from his brother townsmen of Jericho; rather, who had been subjected on all sides, and not undeservedly, to suspicion and distrust. Strange and novel must have been the gleam of tenderness in that eye which scanned him among the thick branches of the sycamore; remarkable the kindness conveyed in the intimation which fell on his ears, "Zaccheus, today I will abide at your house." The word of the infinitely pure One, awoke sensibilities that were dormant, or rather, which had been crushed and stifled by an unsympathizing world, and "he received Him joyfully."\par \par Here is another! He is the most bruised and broken of all--one who had imagined himself strong in faith, giving glory to God; but who had ignominiously bent before the blast of temptation and had denied his divine Master with oaths and curses. Can there be anything of tenderness manifested towards the renegade Apostle? Surely he has placed himself, by his heinous guilt and craven cowardice, beyond the pale of forgiveness. No! when we might have thought the heart he had grievously wounded was alienated from him forever, there was first a "look" of infinite love--a melting glance, which sent him forth to weep bitter tears over foul ingratitude; and subsequently a message, entrusted to the Angel-guardian of the sepulcher and conveyed by him to the three women, "Go your way, tell His disciples and Peter." 'Go, tell the most faithless of My followers, that even for him there is still a place in My tender regard. Go, tell this wandering bird with drooping wing and soiled plumage, that even for him there is a place of shelter still open in the clefts of the Rock.' No more--when Jesus met him subsequently on the shores of Gennesaret, instead of dragging afresh to light painful memories of abused kindness and broken vows, all now too deeply felt to need being recalled; no severer utterance for unworthy apostasy was pronounced, than the gentle rebuke conveyed in the thrice-repeated challenge, "Do you love Me?"\par \par Or, if we may revert to a yet earlier scene in His ministry, it is the occasion on which 'degraded guilt' was brought face to face with 'perfect Purity and Innocence'. He does not palliate the enormity of transgression. By no means! But He who read the heart, makes it an opportunity of proclaiming what His mission is, as a mission of forgiveness. He utters, in the case of the sinner who then confronted Him (as in that of the other weeping Magdalene who bedewed His feet with her tears), the gracious absolution, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more." He again refuses to break the bruised reed and to quench the smoking flax; to send a wreck of misery out, unsuccoured, amid the black night and the howling pitiless winds. "Go and learn," He seems to say, "what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice." "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."\par \par Indeed, when pronouncing some of His most impressive woes and threatenings, He appears, at times, as if He dreaded lest any broken-hearted one might misinterpret His sayings, and construe His wrath against sin and hypocrisy, as indicating a lack of consideration to the penitent. Take as an example the occasion when He had been proclaiming stern words regarding the contemporary "sinful generation;" more especially rebuking them for their blind unbelief in the midst of light and privilege; declaring that for those cities which had scorned His message (Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum), it would be more tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah than for them. He seems suddenly to pause. The storm has exhausted itself. Possibly amid the crowd who had just listened to these utterances of wrath, His Omniscient eye discerned some trembling outcast--some brittle reed or sapling bending beneath the hurricane. He will not allow it to be broken. He will not permit the wind and earthquake and fire to pass, without being followed by a 'still small voice'--and then it is, that the words (unparalleled in their tenderness and beauty among all He ever spoke) come like a gleam after the tempest, or like a rainbow encircling with its lovely hues the angry spray--"Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."\par \par In His last prayer preceding the Passion, how touching are His pleadings in behalf alike of His disciples and His Church! More like a mother's tenderness over her defenseless children, when, leaving the parental care, they are sent forth lonely and unbefriended to face and fight the battles of life in an ungenial world.\par \par In the climax of His own humiliation, when nailed to the cross of Calvary, how tenderly does He commit His dearest earthly relative to the keeping of His dearest human friend! How tenderly in the extremity of anguish and soul-desertion, does He speak words of heart-cheer to the dying thief at His side! How tenderly does He plead for those who had entwined the thorn-crown around His bleeding brows, and driven the rough iron into those hands which had never been employed save to cure--never uplifted except to bless!\par \par On the Mount of Ascension, when the gates of heaven were ajar, and its distant hallelujahs of welcome to "the King of glory" were already wafted to His ear--how tenderly He breathes a farewell on the orphaned band; as if all His thoughts and all His love were still centered on those He was about to leave behind Him--the last vision imprinted on their memories being that of His arms uplifted in benediction!\par \par When He meets the beloved disciple in Patmos, and the awestruck beholder, dazzled with the luster of His glorified humanity, falls at His feet as one dead--how tenderly is he reminded that he is in the presence of the same unchanged and unchanging ONE, on whose bosom of love he had often pillowed his head on earth. At midnight, years before, on the dark, stormy surface of Gennesaret, the Spirit-form he and his fellow-disciples so much dreaded, spoke the reassuring word, "It is I; do not be afraid!" 'That same Jesus' comes down now from the still waters of the river of life--the nightless city of the crystal sea, with the same well-remembered soothing lullaby--"He laid His right hand upon me, saying, 'do not be afraid!'" It was, yet again, "as one whom his mother comforts." Oh, when the aged Evangelist and honored Prophet retired to Ephesus, in the evening of his life, to put in writing personal experience of the Divine dealings, well might he say (regarding these and other remembrances, indelibly impressed on him, of his living, loving Lord), "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth!"\par \par Let it, however, be very carefully noted, that there was nothing indiscriminate in the tenderness of Christ. It was tenderness towards the weak, the poor, the helpless, the penitent, the erring. There was, as we have already had occasion to remark, no tenderness towards sin. On the contrary, there was uncompromising severity towards all wrong-doing and hypocrisy, oppression and untruthfulness. How unsparingly He lashed the vices of the age! With what withering words He confronted and combated Pharisee and Sadducee! When the tears were scarcely dry which He wept over Jerusalem, the scourge was in His hand driving the sacrilegious traffickers from the Temple-courts, who had converted the most sacred ground on earth, into place and opportunity for ministering to their own avarice! "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!" was His voice of stern rebuke, as the guilty crowd fled affrighted from His presence.\par \par Side by side with the Parable of the Vineyard laborers, wherein, even at the eleventh hour, a welcome was offered and wages given to every unhired idler in the market-place--we have the Parable of the Blighted Fig-tree on the heights of Olivet (with its pretentious foliage--"nothing but leaves")--stretching out its skeleton arms to heaven, a monument of vengeance--this the malediction uttered against it by these same lips of compassion--"From now on, let no fruit grow upon you forever!"\par \par Reader, do you know the preciousness of the Rock-cleft on which we have been dwelling? amid the rough blasts of life, to take shelter in the Tenderness of Him whose love is better, truer, more enduring, than that of the kindest and most loving of earthly friends? Have you learned to sing amid the moanings of the storm\endash\par "Jesus, Refuge of my soul,\par Let me to Your bosom fly;\par When the waters o'er me roll,\par While the tempest still is high?"\par \par Do you know what it is, as one of the sheep of His pasture, when weary and footsore, panting, and burdened--to run to this Infinitely gracious Shepherd, who, in the beautiful metaphor of Isaiah already quoted, delights to carry the Lambs in His arms and gently to lead His burdened ones?\par \par WHAT ARE THESE BURDENS? They are many and diversified.\par \par With one, it may be that of CONVICTION OF SIN. You may have reached the momentous time in your spiritual history, when conscience has awoke from the 'low dream of earth' with quickened sensibility--when forgotten sins are brought before you in vivid memorial; the obligations of a misspent life flashing upon you the reality of a hopeless bankruptcy; and you feel how utterly vain is the plea with which you have long sought to delude yourself--"Have patience with me, and I will pay You all." You may feel, to change the figure, that in yourself you are the most worthless and abandoned of prodigals; that you have righteously forfeited a place within the paternal halls! But, He is waiting your return. He sees you, haggard, hunger-stricken--sick at heart. He watches the first indications of penitential sorrow. While yet "a great way off," He is ready with the fond embrace and the kindly welcome. Wondrous tenderness, surely, do these His own words describe, in that surpassingly touching parable--"His Father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him." What! the riotous living--the spendthrift life--the debasing companionship, all forgotten? Yes, by that one kiss of forgiveness, all is buried in everlasting oblivion!\par \par With another--it may be the burden of declension and backsliding--the guilt of apostasy from a first love--the decay of the inner life. Permitted sin and permitted worldliness have superinduced languor and lethargy. You are not what once you were--you have lost tenderness of conviction--you have blunted the fine edge of conscience--the old ardor in the divine race is gone; you have allowed the tooth of earthly cares to corrode--petty vexations and annoyances to eat out the kernel of religion--"the little foxes" have entered unchallenged the soul's vineyard and spoiled the grapes. None more bruised and broken than you. The flax, once burning clear, gives forth now nothing but noxious smoke--polluting and poisoning the atmosphere of your spiritual being! Despond not. The forgiving love and tenderness of Christ can meet your case. Burdened one, He your Shepherd is willing gently to lead you also. He will rekindle these smouldering ashes of a dying love--He will "strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die."\par \par What says He, by the lips of the Prophet, to His backsliding people? (and He says the same to you)--"you keep right on doing all the evil you can"--(as much as to say--'You could not have done worse'). "Yet," He adds, "O Israel, My faithless people, come home to Me again, for I am merciful. I will not be angry with you forever. Only acknowledge your guilt. Admit that you rebelled against the Lord your God and committed adultery against Him by worshiping idols under every green tree. Confess that you refused to follow Me. I, the Lord, have spoken!" Jeremiah 3:12-13\par \par With another, the burden may be of a different kind. It maybe the burden of SORROW AND TRIAL. He may have touched you to the quick. It may be the woundings of friends--hardships in leading a religious life--the jeers and mockings of ungodly companions, or those of your own household. It may be the loss of worldly substance, or the blighting of fond affection, or the yawning chasm made by death and bereavement--these and similar causes may have made you weary and heavy-laden--or left you a broken bruised reed on the world's highway. You may be unable to trace the mystery of the Divine dealings--you may be even tempted to indulge in unworthy surmises regarding the Divine faithfulness!\par \par What a blessed Rock-cleft for you also, in the tenderness of Him, who, being a disciple Himself in this school of affliction, is able to enter with exquisite sensitiveness into all your sorrows. That apparently 'rough voice' of the true Joseph to His brethren, is 'tenderness in disguise'. He will not speak too roughly. He knows what you can bear. He will temper the wind to the shorn lamb--He will make this sorrow, whatever it is, fruitful in blessing--"For thus says the Lord--as the new wine is found in the cluster, and one says, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it--so will I do for My servant's sake."\par \par So tender is He, that He feels what is done to His people as if it were done to Himself--"Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?" The faintest sound of woe still, as of old, arrests His ear. As in nature, He alike guides the planets in their orbits, and watches the fall of the sparrow; as He alike tends the kingly sun and the lowly dewdrop--so in the moral and spiritual world. While He receives the archangel's homage, He listens to the cry of the infant on its knees--or notes the tear and the wail of the widow in her agony. Like His own shepherd in the parable, He rejoices to go after the lost one--the worst truant of the fold--"until He find it."\par \par O You, into whose lips grace is poured!--You Mighty One!--Yet infinitely tender!--ride forth in Your glory and in Your Majesty, "because of truth and meekness and righteousness!" Forbid that it should be, in the case of any perusing these pages, as with Jerusalem of old--that tears of compassion should be accompanied and followed by words of reproach and doom. "How often would I have gathered you!" How often would I have rescued the broken reed, and fanned the smoking flax--carried the feeble lamb, led the burdened, and given rest to the weary--"but you would not--therefore now is your house left unto you desolate!"\par \par Blessed be God, that voice of kindness still sounds in our ears--that waiting Savior--though His "head be wet with dew and His locks with the drops of the night"--still stands knocking, with tones of tenderness on His lips, and the hoarded love of Eternity in His heart! The Great Apostle had many incentives to use, many golden chains with which to moor the tempest-tossed to the Rock of Ages. Among these is the very theme of our present chapter--"Now I Paul beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ." It was indeed no new or original argument. It was that taught and enforced by his great Lord Himself--when He said, in the memorable words already quoted, "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me--for I am gentle and humble in heart."\par \par The traveler who refused to part with his cloak at the bidding of the furious chilling wind, surrendered it to the warming influence of the sun. What the tempests of the law--"the terrors of the Lord"--fail to effect--may be accomplished, and often is accomplished, by the gracious beams radiating from the true 'Sun of Righteousness'. Let us own their potency. Let us fall down, vanquished by His gentleness.\par \par Blessed Savior, let the tenderness of Your deeds on earth--the tenderness of Your invitations to the weary and the burdened--the tenderness of Your tears wept over Jerusalem--the tenderness of Your words spoken in Your death-agony, salvation to the felon and forgiveness to the murderers--let these and other memories of gospel story--like a peal of heavenly bells, summon me to enter the opened gates of mercy. Let me listen to them, as the many-toned voices of the Beloved inviting to flee to the 'Clefts of the Rock.' There, safe--secure--at rest forever, and with the blessed consciousness of all the elevating, ennobling privileges to which Your bleeding love has exalted me--may it be mine to say in the triumphant words of the Psalmist, "You have also given me the shield of Your salvation; and Your right hand has held me up, and YOUR GENTLENESS HAS MADE ME GREAT."\par \cf1\fs23\par } ce I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." \endash John 14:27\par \par And just as they were telling about it, Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them. He said, "Peace be with you." \endash Luke 24:36\par \par "I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world." \endash John 16:33\par \par "Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us." \endash Romans 5:1\par \par "The heart never rests until it finds rest in God." \endash Augustine, 410.\par \par "Jesus came to me in the third watch of the night, walking upon the waters. He stilled the tempest in my soul--and lo! there was a great calm!" \endash Halyburton, 1670.\par \par "Oh, that I might effectually recommend to you the full possession of that precious legacy of our blessed Savior--peace." \endash Hall, 1574.\par \par No shadow of the "Great Rock in the weary land," is more precious to the children of humanity than this. The circumstances in which the Savior uttered these words were interesting and peculiar, and give a deep pathos to His declaration. It was at a time, one would have thought, of the deepest unrest and anxiety to His own soul; a time when the saying, "My peace I give unto you," would have seemed a strange and questionable blessing--for the shadows of the cross were gathering around Him; the Prince of darkness was prowling on His path; and the dreadful scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary were close at hand. And yet it was then (yes, at the very moment when the Rock of Ages was wrapped in portentous gloom), that Jesus speaks of the calm and the rest awaiting those who find shelter in its clefts. He was delivering His final charge to His disciples; imparting to them directions, comforts, and promises--His farewell benediction. Some consolation, higher than earth could afford, was needed, when the Shepherd was about to be smitten and the sheep to be scattered. In the clouds of that dark, troubled horizon He sets the rainbow of covenant Peace. His utterance was more than a promise--it is couched in the formula of a last Will--a Testamentary deed. It is the dying legacy which the Prince of Peace bequeaths to His Church and people in every age.\par \par Taking these words of Jesus more specially to guide our thoughts, let us advert to three, out of many characteristics of this priceless legacy.\par \par I. It is A WELL-FOUNDED PEACE--and in this respect it is "not as the world gives." By reason of the great original apostasy, the soul of man has lost its peace; and fallen nature, not unaware of the loss, yet all ignorant where the forfeited blessing is to be recovered, is engaged in a perpetual effort to effect the restoration. In ten thousand ways does the world "minister to a mind diseased," singing its siren lullaby--"Peace, Peace;" while, from the unsatisfied aching voids of the heart, the echo is returned, "No peace." The object desired being too often sought either at forbidden or at polluted fountains, multitudes fail to secure the coveted prize.\par \par The Peace enjoyed by the believer in Jesus, is full, complete, satisfying. It rests on the broad foundation of His atoning work and sacrifice, ratified by the Father and sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. It is the death of the Divine Testator which enables us, by law, to enter on this bequeathed heritage--"Where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the Testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead--otherwise it is of no strength at all while the Testator lives." Never was a Will so "proved" and "attested" as this. The adorable Redeemer surrendered His precious life, in order that (in the words just quoted from the Epistle to the Hebrews) it might be rendered "of force." Moreover, unlike all mere human and earthly Testators, He rose from the grave and ascended to His Father's right hand, to see its provisions and bequests implemented. He who executed this testamentary disposition is still our Advocate in the Court of Heaven--and, as such, He will take care that all His heirs are granted the purchased blessings.\par \par It is a peace founded on the principles of everlasting truth and everlasting righteousness. As its primary condition, it secures alike the vindication of the divine law and the manifestation of the divine glory; for the Angels who came to announce the restoration of the lost heritage, sang--"Glory to God in the highest," before they proclaimed "Peace on earth." Let us think of it, then, as a peace purchased by Jesus--"Peace through the blood of His cross." In no other way could it have been procured. By no other could it be bestowed. No voice, but the voice which exclaimed in dying accents, "It is finished," can say to the troubled tempest-tossed soul--"Peace, be still."\par \par In the familiar Bible narrative, we see the heathen sailors rowing hard to bring the vessel to land, in whose hold was the fugitive Prophet. It was in vain. "The sea raged, and was tempestuous"--wave after wave baffled strength of oar and muscle. What then was their recourse? The sacrifice of the one life was demanded and surrendered for the sake of the others. So it was with the true Jonah. When He was taken and cast into the deep--that deep was hushed into a calm--its fury stilled--every tumultuous billow rocked to rest--"The sea ceased from her raging." "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." As it was sin that was the cause of disharmony, so the Redeemer, by His propitiatory, meritorious sacrifice, has taken that cause away. He has effected the atonement, ("at-one-ment.") "He is our peace, who has made both one." We are "made near by the blood of Christ."\par \par In a striking passage in Isaiah, God and man, by a bold figure of speech, are represented as at war with one another--God "going through the wicked" as "briers and thorns" and "burning them up together." But a gracious alternative is also provided and offered--"OR, let him take hold of My strength that he may make peace with Me, and he shall make peace with Me." "He SHALL." Peace is uncertain and precarious in other things. It is often a hollow truce, which hushes for a time the clang of arms, only to have the strife resumed. But it is certain here--for the "one offering" of the Great Peacemaker, who is God's "Strength,"--"the Arm of the Lord"--"the Man of His right hand"--has given Him the prerogative to utter the words, "You shall find rest unto your souls."\par \par Let all those who are going about seeking peace and finding none, shelter themselves under the eagle-wings of this glorious truth. That peace is no simulation--no counterfeit. There is no flaw in these title-deeds. It is a perfect peace--peace with God above, and peace with conscience within--peace secured by the Sufferer on the Cross, and ratified by the Kingly Intercessor on the Throne. Like the weary bird, after tracking its way across long leagues of waste ocean, the believer can sink into the crevice of the Great Rock, and sing the song of an older heir of covenant blessings, "Return unto your Rest (your Peace), O my soul."\par \par II. Another characteristic of the peace of Christ is, that it is a PRESENT peace; and as such, "not as the world gives." The world's visions of peace are most generally prospective; the world's notes are promissory. Many of its best blessings are mere hopes and wishes for the future. Its hope 'deferred' too often makes the heart sick. Its future is full of air-castles in due time to be raised; but when the longed-for season of realization comes, how often they turn out to be airy nothings, "baseless fabrics of a vision."\par \par Many a man has a lifetime to wait, before the hopes of youth are fulfilled; and when the wealth or the leisure he has aspired after, or the broad acres he has hoped to inherit come to him, frequently he cannot enjoy them. The zest of life is over; the tinted soap-bubble he has for long years been inflating collapses, and new worries and troubles take the place of the old ones! Not so the peace of Jesus. It is a peace, indeed, largely of future enjoyment in a better world; but it is a peace, if not in degree, at least in kind, possessed in the present also. The moment the offers of grace are closed with and accepted, the charter of peace is put into the believer's hands. He receives the first instalment of the gracious benefaction, "We who have believed DO enter into rest." "All who believe are justified." "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God." "I AM pacified," says God, "towards you." "Beloved NOW are we the sons of God."\par \par The Prodigal, in returning to his Father's house, had not first to undergo years of probation before he received the kiss of peace and reconciliation and love; he had not to wait until the flush of health had filled his sunken cheeks, or until clad in proper attire he could venture into his Father's presence. No--just as he was--in all the rags of the 'far country'--with haggard face, and trembling limb, and sunken eye--he receives the paternal welcome, and gets the best ring, and robe, and shoes, put upon him.\par \par Reader, think of this! If you have been brought, self-renouncing and sin-renouncing, to the foot of the cross, the peace of God and of His Christ is already yours. If that peace had been in any way your own procuring, then might its attainment be effected only after years of laborious effort. But being purchased, you have only to come and accept it as a free gift, a blessed gratuity; being bequeathed to you, you have only to claim joyfully the inheritance, and enter on its possession--"giving thanks unto the Father, who HAS made us fitt to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." It was a common salutation among the Jews in entering a dwelling of old, "Peace be upon this house." So Jesus, standing by the threshold of every believing penitent soul, says, as He said to His gathered disciples on the evening of His resurrection day, "Peace be unto you." "My peace I GIVE unto you" (not "I shall give"). "O, my dove, who is in the clefts of the Rock."\par \par III. A third characteristic of the peace of Jesus is, that it is a PERMANENT peace--and as such, it is "not as the world gives." Many of the world's best blessings, those which are considered to minister most effectually to outward happiness and inward tranquillity, may be ours today--but be gone tomorrow. We have no pledge or guarantee for their continuance. They are fed from the low marshy grounds of earth, dependent on fitful seasons and capricious showers. But the peace of Christ being from Heaven, is a perennial stream; it is fed from surer supply than glacier Alps, and it rolls on in undiminished fullness and volume, in summer's drought and in winter's cold.\par \par It is the greatest of mistakes to suppose that mere outward things--fame, wealth, property, honors, give peace. It is often the reverse. They give care and anxiety. They give birth to envyings and jealousies, to discontent and ingratitude. They are as often a man's curse as a blessing. But the peace of Jesus is irrespective and independent of all outward accidents. It bears up and sustains amid the annoyances of business, the crushings of poverty, the weariness of sickness, the pangs of bereavement, the shadows of death.\par \par Yes! if you would wish to understand the true meaning of that phrase, "the peace of God which passes all understanding," go to the believer's dying couch; see (what may be witnessed again and again) when earth is dimming from the view--when the footsteps are standing on the threshold of the mysterious spirit-world, and all that is held dear is to be parted from forever. Listen to the words so often whispered, "All is peace--perfect peace." And as the color fades from the cheek, and the smile of heaven suffuses the now hushed and silent lips, oh, how is the promise--(realized indeed, all through life--but never more so than in life's closing hour)--how is that promise then fulfilled--"You will KEEP him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You."\par \par Among the glorious army of MARTYRS, who have then witnessed and exemplified the sustaining peace of God, those at all events familiar with Scottish annals, may recall one whose calm heroism is made more memorable in a familiar picture. There God's noble-minded servant is represented reclining on a crude couch. He has the horrors of execution before him on the morrow; yet he lies in tranquil slumber, like a babe on its mother's breast. When the waves of death are dashing at his feet, he calmly reposes in this Rock-cleft of peace! Well may the gifted author of the "Pilgrim's Progress" give the name of "PEACE" to the chamber "in which Christian lay," and whose "window opened towards the sun-rising."\par \par We may conclude with a word of EXPLANATION, and a word of exhortation.\par \par It must not be imagined, from what has been said, that the believer's history is one of unclouded calm--a sky in which there brood no storms--a path in which there lurk no briars. That strange paradox of the apostle will be true to the last in the Christian's experience, "sorrowful yet always rejoicing." Paul, even when he speaks of peace, exhorts to have "the feet SHOD;" for, notwithstanding its possession, the road is often a rough and a thorny one. The same voice which proclaims, "My peace I give unto you," adds, "In the world you shall have tribulation." The way to peace is often through the channel of unrest and trial; just as the water that sleeps quietly in the pool has found its way there over jagged rock and foaming cataract.\par \par The disciples' way to land, and that too at their Master's bidding, was through a stormy sea, "toiling in rowing." The Israelites' road to the rest of Canaan was through the barren wilderness. Jacob's way to spiritual victory, and a peace to which he was a stranger before, was through a night of wrestling and soul-struggle. The afflictions of life--temptation without and corruption within--are ever and always ruffling the calm repose of the soul, and reminding that true peace and abiding rest are above. "Beloved," says Peter, "think it not strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you." This is the history of every harpist on the glassy sea, "These are they who came out of great tribulation."\par \par Amid all trials, however, it is the believer's consolation, that, despite of outer disquietudes, the true peace of Christ itself cannot be disturbed. The former are only like the surface-heavings of the ocean. That surface alone is fretted and ruffled. Go down into its unexplored depths, among its luscious wildernesses of sub-marine seaweed--its coral rocks and wondrous mosaic of pebble and sand, and all is peaceful and still. No rolling billow is heard there--no roaring breaker--no scream of storm-birds. So with the soul! In its lowest, truest depths, all is peace. The ship may be tossed, but its moorings are secure. In the same sentence in which the pressure of present corruption impels Paul to cry out, "O wretched man that I am;" he adds, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." He bemoans the tossings of the frail bark in one breath--he remembers the strength and security of the anchor in the next.\par \par The believer's subjective peace, the calm assurance or consciousness of his interest in Christ, may be often assailed. But the peace itself cannot be. The clouds, engendered by sin and weakness and unbelief, may at times obscure from his vision the rays of the Sun. But the Sun, notwithstanding, shines brightly as ever. Once that peace is his, he knows it never can be finally forfeited. The flowing of the spiritual river may be impeded; there may be opposing rocks which here and there disturb the even course of its current--but it will surmount them all, and mingle its waters at last in the ocean of eternal peace and love in heaven.\par \par Meanwhile, beware of creating such obstructions as will tend to mar your peace--indulged sin, or neglected duty. You may be personally responsible for diverting the river from its channel, and leaving your soul "a dry and thirsty land where no water is." "Great peace," says the Psalmist, "have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble." Keep out of the way of temptation; avoid the brink of the precipice if you would avert a fall. Keep beyond reach of the fire lest you be burnt. "Oh," exclaims the great Giver of peace, speaking to His backsliding Israel, "Oh that you had hearkened to My commandments, then had your peace been as a river." What is the apostle's recipe for the preservation of peace? "Be anxious for nothing," says he, "but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving . . . and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts." Walk," he again enjoins, "in the Spirit;" and what is the result? "The fruit," he adds, "of the Spirit is love, joy, PEACE."\par \par Let us add yet a word of EXHORTATION. Some may fancy themselves in the happy position of not requiring this gospel blessing of which we have been speaking. They are undisturbed by any fears of guilt. They know no accusations of conscience. They contrive to banish the thought of death and what is after death. Aye, even when they come to that solemn crisis hour, the Psalmist's description may be true of them--they have "no bands in their death; their strength is firm."\par \par Is this, however, peace? Yes. But it is the peace of the cemetery. The dead "know not anything." No voice reaches the ears in that silent land. The voice of affection, the sobs of the disconsolate, may break over the grassy turf; but they hear them not. The "loud stunning tide of human care" may go surging past the narrow homes--the speechless tenants listen to no footsteps; the clang of battle may be heard raging close by, profaning the sanctity of 'God's acre;'--the sound of no trumpet or clarion, no clash of arms nor roll of drum, wakes one echo in that 'empire of oblivion'; silence sways her unchallenged scepter. It is the dread stillness and peace of death! Beware of such a peace of the soul as this. It is possible to continue, even to the last, self-deluded and self-deceived, and to die with a lie in your right hand. But be assured, from such a peace there will be a terrible awaking. It is only the portentous silence which, in the outer world, holds nature silent before the bursting of the thunderstorm. "There is no peace"--there can be no peace, "says God, to the wicked."\par \par Be it yours to ascertain, before it be too late, on what foundation your peace rests. Give up the vain dream of procuring peace in anything short of Jesus. No wealth can give it; no wealth of money, no wealth of intellect, no wealth of affection. Live near the cross, and peace is yours. "How beautiful upon the mountains" are the feet of the divine messenger who "publishes peace!"\par \par You may now be racked with care, fevered with disappointment, and, worse than all, bound and fettered with sin. Like the maniac of old dwelling among the tombs, you may be roaming the moral wastes, crying and cutting yourself with stones. One voice alone can tame you, and change the storm of the soul into a calm--that one is JESUS. There (at His cross and His feet) you will have possession of peace--peace from the condemning sentence of the law--peace from the accusations of a guilty conscience--peace amid the trials of life--peace in the prospect of approaching dissolution. You will have peace in the gladdening, sustaining conviction that all events are under your Redeemer's control--that He orders all that concerns your temporal and eternal well-being. You can sleep securely in the tempest, for the helm is in the hands of Him whom these winds and waves obey. "The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever."\par \par Speed, then, your flight, O weary wanderer, to the true Ark. The true Noah, the "Rest," the Peace-giver, invites you within. Seize the olive-branch, and wing your way across the stormy waters. The bough on which your earthly nest was built, may have been felled by the axe or broken by the storm; but "He is our peace." And as driven by the windy tempest your cry is, "O Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, grant me Your peace!"--O Rock of Ages, cleft and smitten for me, grant me Your shelter!\par \par May it be yours to listen to the glad response, "My peace I give unto you"--"Though you have lived among the pots, yet shall you be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold."\par \cf1\fs23\par } ; y 09 Christ the Peace Giver.1{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CHRIST THE PEACE GIVER\par \par "Pea25\par \par "Who is a God like You? None can pardon as You do. None can pardon so freely; none so fully; none so eternally; none so effectually, as You do. It is all one to You, whatever the sins are; and all one to You, whose the sins are; so long as they come ask pardon of You. \endash Caryl, 1670.\par \par The pressing, urgent question with a thousand thousand anxious souls--overwhelmed with the weight of aggravated transgression--is this--"Can this God-Man-Redeemer--this Surety-Substitute--be a Savior for all indiscriminately? A shelter and refuge for others, can these Rock-clefts be open for the guiltiest?" It is the old controversy that Satan has with many--whom he first goads on to presumption, and then, when entangled in his meshes, he seeks to drive to despair. Many such has that merciless warder shut up in the deepest dungeons of "Doubting Castle"--gloomy cells, where the sunlight is forbidden to enter--and rung over them the knell of 'extinguished hope'. The crushing thought of personal unworthiness--the memories of guilty bygone years, rise up before them like avenging angels.\par \par What! this Savior and salvation for ME--it cannot be! I have plunged madly into sin--not, like others, because I have never been warned--never counseled--never known the tenderness of a mother's prayers, nor the sanctity of a father's entreaties, nor the privileges of a hallowed home. I have been oblivious of all these. Even now, I seem to listen (though in years long gone by), to voices which I have lived basely to scorn--to counsels I have trampled on--the retrospect all the sadder by the reflection that the lips which spoke them are hushed in the grave--and the arms that of old cuddled me, as on Sabbath night I knelt by the loved knee, are mouldering in the tomb.\par \par What! Christ receive ME, with all that diary of a misspent, godless, defiant life unveiled to His omniscient eye!--deeds of foul depravity--outbursts of fiery passion--malignant purposes of revenge--dishonest deals in business--undermining my neighbor and my friend's name and character to advance my own--secret crimes which have involved the ruin of the innocent--my own ship fatally sunk--but worse far than this, miserable wrecks for which I am guiltily responsible, strewing the shores. Mine is not, as it is with many, a mere upper layer of iniquity; but it is deposit on deposit--strata piled on strata--the mournful consolidation of a life of sin; ten thousand echoes ring along the dreary corridors of the past, "lost! lost! lost!" "Surely my way is hidden from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God."\par \par No not so! Aggravated as your case is, it is never hopeless; you cannot hear your spiritual death-knell tolled, so long as you can read the golden letters which head this meditation--"Able to save unto the uttermost." You may have been to the uttermost a sinner--you may have gone the sickening round of all life's follies--run riot of its whole enchanted circle--no prodigal may have ever wallowed deeper in the mire and morass than you. O Israel, you may have destroyed yourself--there may be not one redeeming feature in your case--not one gleaning left for the grape-gatherer--you may be a stripped, defenseless, degenerate Vine--fit only for the axe and the cumberer's doom.\par \par But hearken to the words of God--"In Me is your help." "I know the thoughts which I think towards you--thoughts of peace and not of evil!" "I, even I, am He that blots out your transgressions, and as a cloud your sins." "I--even I"--the very Being you have most deeply injured--whose Spirit you have grieved--whose mercies you have scorned--I, the Almighty Creditor, am ready to grant and sign a full pardon--"Him that comes unto Me I will in nowise cast out." The Stronger than the strong man armed, sounds the silver trumpet of jubilee, "He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound." And blessed have been the millions who have heard that joyful sound!\par \par There is indeed one sin mentioned in Scripture, but only one, which debars any soul from the Savior--the sin which is left purposely wrapped in its own undefined dreadful mystery--"the sin against the Holy Spirit!" But if there be, in the case of the most apparently hopeless, one breathing of penitence--one prayerful aspiration after a nobler being, then we believe we are warranted in saying, that which is called "the unpardonable sin" you have not committed. If you had, your heart would have been utterly impervious to conviction--all the avenues of conscience would have been closed. Like the fool spoken of by the Psalmist who has reached the climax of his hardihood, you would have remained callous and indifferent to every pleading voice, alike in Providence and grace--despising the credulous weakness of those around you who are listening to 'the idle tales,' and saying in your inmost heart--"No God for me!"\par \par However far therefore you may have fallen, if the feeblest sigh of contrition be still heaved, it demonstrates that you are still a 'prisoner of hope,' and gives you encouragement to "turn to the stronghold." One warming beam of the Sun of Righteousness finding its way amid the frigid icebergs of your moral being, is evidence sufficient that you are not left icebound in the winter of eternal desertion; in one word, that yours is not the sin that is beyond the reach of forgiveness; but that we are abundantly warranted to address you now in the glorious words, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and unto our God, and He will abundantly pardon." "Why sit still?" says Bunyan, in his "Jerusalem Sinner Saved"--"arise. Why stand still? 'Begin at Jerusalem' is your call and authority to come. Therefore, up! and shoulder it, man! Say, Stand away, Devil, Christ calls me--stand away, unbelief, Christ calls me--stand away, all you my desponding apprehension s, for my Savior calls me to receive of His mercy."\par \par Let us not, however, in these encouraging thoughts, be misunderstood. Let none say--If such be the gracious, unrestricted offer of the Gospel--if Christ can save the vilest and the basest--if He can save at the very verge and extremity of life, may I not live now as I please, and trust to His mercy at my deathbed? No! That Gospel of pardon and forgiveness is not for the future, it is for the present moment. The words are not--"He SHALL be able to save to the uttermost," but "He IS able"--not "he who SHALL believe," but "he who believes shall be saved." You can put no presumptuous reliance on a deferred repentance. Moreover, be assured, the farther you advance in willful unbelief and impenitence, the harder will it be to put an arrest on your downward course. The stone, as it descends from the mountain top, increases in momentum and velocity. Each new bound it takes, is alike greater and swifter, until with a final leap it disappears. E very hour you live unsaved, you are bounding, like that stone, with accelerated speed, down the dark precipices.\par \par The child's hand can stop in its course a ball of snow as it is loosened at the hill summit, but who could arrest its rush, when grown into an avalanche, it thunders onward from crag to crag towards the Valley. Add to this--by guilty presumptuous delay, you miss the present joy and happiness of forgiveness--the joy, while walking through this world, while mingling in its care s and duties and trials, of rising above them all, under the elevating consciousness "I am forgiven;" and of joining in the sweet melody--"O Lord, I will praise You, for though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You comforted me!"\par \par One other closing thought suggests itself, by laying emphasis on the first word of our motto-verse--"HE is able to save." Christ is not only a Savior to the uttermost, but He is the only Savior. Reject Him, and "there is no more offering fo r sin." "Neither is there salvation in any other." "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, who is Jesus Christ." How many are reluctant to accept of this truth in all its unqualified freeness. They would sincerely raise up some personal work in the matter of their justification. They refuse to entrust to the great Physician their entire cure. They would gather some of the balm of Gilead with their own hands--they would weave some of the web of merit on their own loom. Others would vaunt their good deeds, and make these excuse and palliate their bad deeds; striking a balance between merit and demerit; presuming that by a law of moral compensation, the average will fully entitle them to God's favor. Others hope to meet the undischarged debt of the past and condone shortcomings by a better future, giving the promissory-note to the great Creditor, "Have patience with me, and I will pay You all."\par \par But what says Jehovah? "I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is NO Savior." Nothing dare come in the place of the one work of Immanuel. The giant deed of His doing and dying must stand alone in its integrity, admitting neither substitute nor supplement. "Salvation," says the Psalmist (from first to last), "salvation belongs unto God." Those attempting to thrust in something of meritorious SELF, only put stumbling-blocks in the king's highway. They only load the wings of the dove with needless encumbrances--hamper and retard its flight to the clefts of the one Rock of safety. They are trusting their anchors, not to a chain of iron but to a cord of thread. They are doing what will all be undone. They are ploughing the sand only that it may collapse in its own furrow. They are laboring in the fire only to have the result of their toil consumed. They are building on the bough of the tree whose roots the winter flood is fast sapping, instead of having "their nest in a rock."\par \par "He only," says the Minstrel King, "is my Rock and my Salvation." "Lord, save me, else I perish," said Peter, as, with sinking step, he turned his eye from the unstable billow to the Divine Being at his side. Perhaps it was with this Gennesaret memory recalled, that he could, long afterwards, proclaim to skeptic Jews and mocking heathen the noble confession of his faith--"There is no other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved."\par \par Ah, when shall the self-deceived and self-satisfied learn, not to come, like Naaman, to the door of the true Elisha, with ornamented horses and magnificent chariot filled with gifts, expecting to be told to do some "great thing?"--but ready, at the bidding of the Gracious Physician, to go with their incurable leprosy straight to the waters of the living stream, and there "wash and be clean." "Ho, every one that thirsts, come to the waters, and he that has no money--come! buy and eat; yes, come, buy wine and milk without money, and without price."\par \par You, then, who are wandering "in the wilderness in a solitary way," your soul fainting within you, mocked again and again with the mirage of life, the hollow nothingness of this painted world; or you, perhaps, whose wilderness experience is different; the hot blinding wind of trial unexpectedly overtaking you, strewing your caravan on the desert sands, and leaving priceless treasures hidden from your sight--oh turn from the perishable to the imperishable; turn from torn tents and shattered canvas to the only secure shelter, saying, "The Lord lives, and blessed be my Rock, and let the God of my salvation be exalted." Thousands on thousands, with drooping wing and wailing cry, have flown for refuge beyond the storm-clouds of earth to these glorious Rock-clefts, and yet there is room; pardon for all, peace for all, heaven for all. Hear the sainted multitude, as, in garments whiter than snow, they cast their crowns before the throne and pour forth their eternal anthem to the one Savior--"You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood!"\par \cf1\fs23\par } 88` 510 Christ a Savior to the Uttermost{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CHRIST A SAVIOR TO THE UTTERMOST\par \par "He is able also to save unto the uttermost, those who come unto God by Him." \endash Hebrews 7:ce and value is the Resurrection of Jesus, forming as it does the crowning proof of the Redeemer's divine mission.\par \par In the hour indeed of deepest humiliation, when pouring out His life's blood on the cross, there were not lacking signs and miracles which evidenced and proclaimed His Godhead glory. There were wondrous symbols in the heavens, and strange convulsions on earth. The shrouded dead rose from their graves. The High Priest was disturbed in his devotions by the mysterious rending of the temple-veil. The sun was draped in darkness as if his race were prematurely run. But, along with these, there were also startling contrasts.\par \par His marred visage is motionless, in death. He who saved others seems powerless to save Himself; He has perished with a felon's excruciating torture. The funeral rites are over. He who raised others from the tomb, is Himself laid lifeless in the sepulcher. The stone is rolled to the mouth of the cave, and the fond hopes of the disconsolate disciples seem crushed forever--"We hoped it had been He that would have redeemed Israel." But on the third day the Divine Conqueror rose triumphant. The glad tidings are circulated from lip to lip, "The Lord is risen indeed;" and from that memorable moment He was declared in apostolic teaching, to be "the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead." As this was the most important fact of all the incidents of the incarnation to have established on clear and decisive evidence (Christianity as a system must stand or fall with it), so did God provide that it should be accredited and authenticated by "many infallible PROOFS." Let us in a few words enumerate these.\par \par The Jewish authorities made sure His sepulcher. It was a sepulcher hewn out of a rock--leaving being thus impossible, except by the one entrance. A band of Roman soldiers were stationed around it, to whom sleeping on watch would have been dishonor and death. A clear passover moon, also, defied the abstracting of the body by stealth in the dark.\par \par And with regard to the testimony of the disciples, it is incredible, when all the circumstances are weighed, that they could be either deceivers or self-deceived. What motive could a handful of illiterate, unsophisticated men have had, in secretively possessing themselves of a dead body, and upholding an imposture? What possibly could induce them to circulate and uphold a cunningly devised fable, when persecution and imprisonment was their only recompense for doing so? Peter had more than once shown a craven spirit. What could have made this Feeble-heart become "bold as a lion," if we resolve that boldness into a mission through the world to defend a lie, and at last to be crucified, as tradition asserts, in a more cruel form and with more intense physical suffering than his Master? And the same is equally true with regard to all the others. There was nothing conceivable for these unlettered, simple-hearted fishermen to gain, by propagating an enormous falsehood. It could bring them neither riches, nor worldly influence, nor renown. It would infallibly draw down upon them scorn and contempt, if not bonds and suffering and death--martyrdom, as in the case of James, with the sword--long exile and lonely banishment as in the case of John.\par \par Paul, also, like "one born out of due time," had surrendered all his hopes of earthly distinction to uphold the fact of a risen Savior. Wonderfully does he unfold and vindicate this cardinal article of his creed, in that noble treatise on the Resurrection, contained in the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians. His pleadings are not like the pleadings of a deceiving advocate--a man who was propping up a desperate and untenable cause--it is the grand exposition of one who would stake his all, yes, life itself, on his fervid heartfelt utterances.\par \par While they had thus no conceivable object in deceiving others, it is equally impossible and improbable that the apostles could themselves have been deceived. It is true they were plain men, but they were no fanatics. They were just such a jury as in this country would enlist our confidence, in submitting a case for decision, which required no more than the testimony of their senses and average powers of discrimination. Though unskilled in the world's wisdom and philosophy and science, they possessed honest minds, capable of taking broad and commonsense views of things. And if some would aver, that, as the disciples of Christ who had accompanied with Him, they were likely to be biased in their opinions, and more disposed than others to be credulous--we know from their own conduct, on the day of alleged resurrection, that it was not so--rather the reverse. They were slow to believe--their faith had been shattered by the crucifixion-scene. When the Risen Lord appeared, not a few doubted; others denounced the wondrous tidings of a vacant sepulcher as "idle tales;" one would not give his assent until he could have tangible evidence of the fact. Not until he had  touched the gash of the spear and the holes in the hands and feet, would he renounce his incredulity, and give in his adherence, as he did, by the emphatic utterance, "My Lord and my God."\par \par Add to this, for the space of forty days after the resurrection, they had been familiar with their Lord's presence--so familiar, as to make sure of His personal identity. Their eyes had seen--their ears had heard--their hands had handled the Word of Life; enabling them to give the united testimony (Ja!mes, Peter, the twelve, the "five hundred brethren at once"), "This Jesus, God has raised up, whereof we ALL are witnesses." In truth, few historical facts are so well authenticated; and those who refuse to admit its evidence as sufficient, must be incredulous and skeptical about other remarkable events in the world, based and established on ordinary data. Reject the truth of the Resurrection because the evidence is inadequate, and the annals of the past must become a blank; skeptical on this, we must be "skeptical on the most important incidents of profane history. Xenophon and Herodotus, Tacitus and Livy, Gibbon and Macaulay, need not have written. Their facts are myths--and the last four thousand years of the world are a chaos.\par \par From what we have said, then, we may cease to marvel at the pre-eminent importance assigned by the inspired writers to this great sheet-anchor of the Church's faith. From the frequency with which they allude to it, even the peerless truth, Christ crucified, see#ms to give way in their estimate to Christ risen. And for this reason, as we shall subsequently show, that the one would be valueless without the other. The glorious light, illuminating the tomb of Jesus, throws its radiations on almost every other doctrine of the Christian system. The believer's justification, regeneration, sanctification, resurrection, glorification--each has its halo of glory borrowed from that vacant sepulcher. "The Resurrection" seems, with the sacred penmen, to be the article of a s$tanding or a falling faith. "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." "And with great power gave the apostles witness of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus."\par \par Paul, to his cultured auditory on Mars' Hill, preached "Jesus and the Resurrection." "It is Christ," says he, "who died, YES RATHER who is risen again." Once more, in the concluding benediction of the great Epistle to the Hebrews, it is the Redeemer's Resurrection which is specially singled %out as the mightiest of God's mighty acts--"Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."\par \par We shall cease to wonder at the relative importance assigned by the apostles to this soul-stirring doctrine, when we brief&ly glance at three, out of the many glorious truths, which cluster around it.\par \par I. It was the public token of the Father's acceptance of the work of Christ. God, by thus raising Him from the place of the dead, and not allowing Him to see corruption, expressed His full and unqualified satisfaction with the great atoning Sacrifice. At the commencement of His Son's ministry, He had given public attestation to His divine mission by the heavenly voice and the descent of the dove. He would now 'at its close, give visible demonstration that the crowning oblation was accepted, and that the expiring cry, "It is finished," uttered on earth, had been heard and ratified in Heaven. "Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father." The demands and penalties of the law having been discharged and fulfilled by His obedience unto death, it was now consistent with the honor of the Father's name, that "His Beloved should be delivered," that "He should save with His right hand and hear Him." The( Surety-Substitute descended into the lonesome prison-house of the grave. The new tomb enclosed Him within its rocky cavern. If one single sin had remained unatoned for, the stone would to this hour have remained sealed, and the hopes of untold millions been buried along with the Captive. Death stormed the citadel. For a moment its walls trembled under the assaulting foe, and the Divine Vanquisher seemed the vanquished. But it was only His heel the serpent touched--no more! He had completed the work which) the Father had given Him to do. He could not be held captive by death. The superincumbent stone (befitting symbol of a violated law) has been rolled away, and two white-robed angels are seated in the deserted tomb, to tell the glad news, "The Lord is risen!"\par \par The believer can now triumphantly exclaim, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His abundant mercy, has begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." *Satan, death, and hell, are chained as trophies to the wheels of His conquering Chariot. He leads these "captive multitudes captive;" taking from them all the armor wherein they trusted, and dividing the spoils. As we behold Him, on that early morning of a new dispensation, carrying in his hand the iron crown of the King of Terrors--a voice proceeding from the excellent glory seems to repeat the old assurance, "This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."\par \par "Lord of Life and Glory,+" says Bishop Hall, "is there any weak soul that makes doubt of Your complete atonement for his sin; of the perfect accomplishment of the great work of man's Redemption? You raised Yourself from the dead leaving that prison of the grave whence You could not have come, until You had paid all." Or as Bishop Reynolds similarly expresses it, "Therefore the Lord sent an angel to remove the stone from the mouth of the Sepulcher; not to supply any lack of power in Him, who could Himself have rolled away the ston,e with one of His fingers; but as a judge, when the law is satisfied, sends an officer to open the prison doors to him who has made that satisfaction, so the Father, to testify that His justice was fully satisfied with the price which the Son had paid, sent an officer from heaven to open the doors of the grave, while his Lord came forth from His bed-chamber."\par \par II. Almost identical with this view, and arising out of it, the Resurrection of Jesus was a pledge of the believer's complete jus-tification. In manifold passages of the New Testament a 'oneness' is represented as existing between Christ and His Church. Every notable official act in the Incarnation was performed by Him in His federal character, as our covenant Head and Representative. When He died, it was reckoned as if His people had died with Him. "I am crucified," says the apostle, "with Christ." "Reckon also yourselves to be dead unto sin." And when the buried Savior rises victorious from the grave, the Church, His mystical body., is represented as rising with Him. "Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also you are risen with Him, through the faith of the operation of God, who has raised Him from the dead." And again, to the same effect, believers are spoken of, as being "quickened together with Christ."\par \par As our adorable Redeemer left behind Him in His tomb the mementoes of victory, so the believer, by virtue of this union with his Lord, becomes a partaker in the same great Resurrection triumph. With every fetter/ of condemnation struck off his limbs, every brand of condemnation effaced from his soul, he walks forth "alive from the dead" claiming as the glorious security of his new resurrection-life, that because Christ lives he shall live also. Thus God the Father, by raising the Living Head, sets His seal to the pardon and justification of all the members. "He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification."\par \par Yes, coming to the empty grave of Jesus, we can see in these s0cattered trophies the pledge and guarantee of our own spiritual emancipation. Written on that tomb are the words--"It is God who justifies, who is he that condemns?" However much we may delight to stand under the shadow of Calvary's Cross, and listen to the Conqueror's dying words, declaring the work finished and the victory won--with not less holy but rather augmented interest do we approach the mouth of the sepulcher, there to be the privileged auditors of tidings fraught with everlasting consolation--"1He is not here, He is risen, as He said; come, see the place where the Lord lay."\par \par Reader, remember too, in the light of that sepulcher, that yours is a completed justification. By virtue of your living union with your living Savior, your acceptance with God is not a question that remains indeterminate and unsettled. It has been settled--the accounts have been closed--the debt liquidated. "Now," says the apostle, "if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. 2Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death has no more dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died unto sin once--but in that He lives, He lives unto God. Likewise reckon you also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin--but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Standing with your feet on that displaced grave-stone, and your eye heavenwards, you can join with Paul in challenging the heights above, and the depths beneath, ever again to separate you from the love of God w3hich is in Christ Jesus your Lord.\par \par III. The Resurrection of Jesus was a pledge and pledge of the Resurrection of His people. "If a man dies, will he live again?" is a problem insoluble by natural religion. What is called the argument from analogy, when we come rigidly to sift it, is really at best not an argument. It is an illustration, a corroboration, no more. To take two well-known and familiar instances. The farmer casts his seed into the furrow--these handfuls of seed, laid in wint4er in an earthy sepulcher, rise in spring exultant from their tomb. No, more, they become, in harvest, fields of yellow corn a hundredfold multiplied. Can analogy fairly point to this, as a triumphant demonstration and prophecy of the body's resurrection? It is a type of it--but no proof of it. And why? Because that buried seed, or rather each individual grain, is not dead. Inert, lifeless though it seems to be, it has within it the germinating principle--the latent element of vitality. The earth of the f5ield into which it is cast is not its grave. It is the nurturing home of a still living thing, which the clods of the valley only serve to foster and develop. Or look at the example of the torpid chrysalis, which in summer starts into resurrection beauty in the form of the butterfly. That chrysalis, also, inanimate as it seems, is not lifeless. Vitality is within the repulsive shell. It is in a dormant state. No more. It only waits the return of summer suns and summer skies, to awake from its sleep of dar6kness and begin its winged existence.\par \par But it is altogether different with the body of man laid in the grave. The analogy is imperfect--rather, it completely fails. There is here no dormant state--no mere condition of torpor. It is utter death--decay--dissolution--brotherhood and sisterhood with the worm and corruption. It is dust resolved into dust--ashes resolved into ashes--earth resolved into earth! Thus, however suggestive these be as illustrations (and we are abundantly warranted t7o take them as such), they form no proof whatever of the certainty of the body's future and final resuscitation. They are beautiful guesses of a great truth culled from the Volume of Nature--but that is all. And when the solemn question is propounded over the grave--"Son of Man, can these bones live?"--Reason can give no more--natural theology can give no more--than the modest answer of the prophet--"O Lord God, You know."\par \par But coming to the grave of Jesus, there we have the problem solv8ed. The Great Abolisher of death has brought life and immortality to light. We hear Him proclaiming, "I am the resurrection and the life," and the gladdening truth is caught up and echoed by one after another of the "glorious company of the apostles." "He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies." "Christ being raised from the dead dies no more, death has no more dominion over Him." "Begotten again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." "Wh9o by Him do believe in God, who raised Him up from the dead."\par \par "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of those who slept." The First fruits--either as a sheaf, or the earliest gatherings of the harvest--were of old taken with pomp and rejoicing to the Jewish temple, and "waived" there "as an offering before the Lord"--the pledge alike of corn-crop and vintage before long to follow. So has the Divine 'Sheaf' (if we can venture, with reverence, to apply the sym:bol) been waived in the Heavenly Temple, the pledge of a coming harvest of immortal redeemed spirits, the fruit of His soul-travail. Nor is it unworthy of note, that there was a remarkable correspondence between the olden Israelitish type and the antitype. The offering of the first fruits of barley harvest among the Jews, took place on "the morrow after the Sabbath" that is, on the third day after the passover. Jesus was crucified on the passover-day. He was laid in His grave on the Jewish passover Sabbat;h. But on the third morn He rose--the very day in which these first fruits of the land were offered in the temple. As the type was being presented in the earthly courts, angels were bearing to the Heavenly the tidings of a risen Antitype. They carried the First sheaf, the glorious pledge of a mighty harvest--gathering in the morning of the general Resurrection, when 'the Church throughout all the world,'--the vast family of the ransomed from earliest to latest eras--would be assembled before the supreme tat the sepulcher was turned into gladness--and their watchword at meeting (the word of congratulation and welcome) was not "the Lord has died," but "the Lord has risen." It was with them a day of praise, more than for confession; for psalms of thanksgiving, more than for penitential tears. Conscious that a new and nobler Genesis had dawned on a benighted world, they sung in responsive melody, "This is the day which the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it."\par \par The pledges of th?e outer material creation are welcome and joyful. If we hail with grateful spirit the first budding of early spring in grove and field, because in these we see the pledge that soon nature will be arrayed in her full robes of resurrection beauty--with what feelings ought we to stand by the sepulcher of our Lord, and see the buried Conqueror rising triumphant over the last enemy! Do we not behold in Him, the harbinger of an immortal spring-time, or rather a glorious harvest, when the mounds of the earth, an@d the caves of the ocean, shall surrender what they have held for ages in sacred custody, "Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision" when "this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality," and the summons shall go forth, "Awake and sing you that dwell in dust." "Christ the first fruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming!"\par \par Not satisfied with His own Resurrection as a pledge of His people's, Jesus gave, in the course of His ministry on earth, fAour striking confirmatory attestations to the same gospel truth; and as has been noted, there is an impressive and significant sequence in these four successive instances of victory over death. The first was in the case of Jairus' daughter. She was "now dead;" the last enemy had only just gained his triumph. The second was the case of the son of the widow of Nain--"He was carried out"--death had for two days put his icy brand on the pale brow. The third is the case of Lazarus, a farther step in the progreBssion--"he has been dead four days"--corruption begun. The final case was on the occasion of the commencing Easter of the Church, when from the graves which had previously been opened by the quaking earth and rending rocks, "many bodies of the saints which slept arose." If the proof had rested with these four illustrative instances of resurrection, we might still have been staggered. They were only temporary resuscitations--no more. They effected only a transitory respite from the iron grasp of the King oCf Terrors.\par \par Lazarus and his restored compeers had the gloomy portals a second time to enter--these withered flowers were revived only to decay--their dust is probably at this moment reposing in one of the Valleys around Jerusalem. But the great Conqueror dies no more, death has no more dominion over Him. He carried away with Him forever the gates of Hades. "You will not leave My soul in the place of the dead, neither will You allow Your holy One to see corruption."\par \par ComDe then, believer, enter into this cleft of the Rock. How it disarms death of all its terrors, to hear the unconquered Lord of Life proclaiming through the bars of the grave, "I am He who lives. I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." In Adam, the first federal head, we are hereditary bondsmen--"in Adam all die." But in our second Head, the Lord from heaven, "shall all be made alive." The grave is converted into a bed of repose, where the sleeping but Eredeemed dust "rests in hope."\par \par You who have priceless treasures in the tomb, think of this! "So He gives His beloved sleep"--"them also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." True, that "house of our earthly tabernacle" at death, is a "darksome ruin." That dust is resolved into its kindred dust. The constituent elements of the dismantled framework are incorporated with new forms of matter. Sad and terrible truly is dissolution in all its accompaniments. We do not wish to strew thaFt dismal path with flowers. Death, from the earthly view of it, is not irradiated by one gleam of sunshine. The slow and gradual wasting and decay, the fading of the bloom from the cheek, the languor of the eye, the wearisome days, the long night-vigils, the mind participating in slow degrees with the wreck of the body, memory often a total blank, even the fondest look and the fondest name eliciting no response! Then the close of all--the silent chamber, where "echo slumbers;" the noiseless footfall, the Gmute crowd of mourners, the grave, the return to the silent dwelling, and the vacant seat--O Death, truly here is your sting; O Grave, truly here is your victory!\par \par But the day is coming when all these memories of woe shall vanish, like the darkness before the morning sun. When the spoil of plundering ages shall in a mysterious way be all restored--when, as in the Prophet's Valley of Vision, bone shall come to bone, and sinew to sinew; the old loving smiles of earth will be seen again in Hthe newly glorified body, purged from all the dross and alloy of its old materialism--the drooping withered flower reviving, beauteous and fragrant with the bloom of immortality!\par \par But for the Death and Resurrection of Christ and the blessed hope of a glorious resurrection to eternal life in Him, how cheerless, how repulsive would be every thought of the grave. How we might well shrink from all its associations, and make the very mention of the name of loved ones a proscribed and forbiddeIn theme--saying, Consign them, as soon as may be, into cheerless oblivion--let them sleep on in their clay couch, unremembered; draw close the grassy curtains around them--whisper not that word into my ear, it only brings memories of darkness and annihilation!\par \par No, no!--talk not of the living as among the dead. "Weep not;" he or she "is not dead but sleeps!" "Why do you weep?" was the question of the risen Conqueror, as He gazed on a tear-dimmed eye on His Resurrection morn. The ChristiaJn's grave need be watered by no tears; for Jesus has converted it into the vestibule of heaven, the robing-room for immortality. Oh! to live as "the children of the resurrection;" as those who are waiting for their Heavenly Father's final adoption--"the redemption of our bodies." We know not the constituents of the higher natures of the invisible world--what are those angel-forms which move in ceaseless errands and ministries of holy love, doing God's pleasure. But no elevation of their immortal being can be higher than that of those, who, from dust, are destined to spring into union (we had almost said assimilation) with deity, "fashioned like unto Christ's glorious body." No more shall there be the elements of decay; no more "the sentence of death in themselves;" no furrow ploughed on the cheek, no wrinkle of age on the brow; but when stars shall fall from their orbits, and worlds succumb to the present laws of decadence, they shall still be in the immortal youth of undying life!\par \cf1\fs23\par } //q I)11 Christ Risen{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CHRIST RISEN\par \par "The Lord is risen indeed!" \endash Luke 24:34\par \par Among the many Rock-clefts of the believer's trust, pre-eminent in importanMod in thought by the entrance to the vacant sepulcher; seen the stone rolled away, and angel-warders telling of Him "Whom God has raised up; having loosed the pains of death; because it was not possible that He should be captive by it."\par \par When the now reassured disciples were fully certified of the amazing fact, may we not well imagine that the thought which would suggest itself to their minds, dominating all others, would be this--"Is He now to remain with us?" Is the adorable presence oNf this Conqueror of death to be given as a permanent inheritance and boon to His Church? No, further, "Is the time now arrived for the often-predicted Messianic reign, when we, as His privileged assessors, are to be seated on twelve thrones--the tribal heads in a new and more blessed theocracy?"\par \par No! Strange and startling, surely, the first message must have been which the Risen One sends them. He bids the weeping disconsolate Mary dry her own tears and theirs, but not with the gladdeninOg assurance that He is now to continue forever in their midst, as a Friend and Guide, to cheer them with His fellowship, and animate them with the tones of His living voice. He sends rather the unexpected announcement--that He must speedily leave them--"Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and your Father, and to My God, and your God." Accordingly, as is minutely described in the sacred narrative, after remaining with His infant Church for forty days subsequent to His resurrectioPn--thus affording His followers ample time and opportunity to have their convictions established, on irrefuteable evidence, regarding the reality of that great event--and after giving all requisite instructions relative to the proclamation of His Gospel and the extension of His Church and kingdom, the Divine Master led His more privileged disciples out "as far as to Bethany, and lifted up His hands and blessed them--and it came to pass that while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up inQto Heaven."\par \par Let us enter this new "Cleft of the rock;" and under its shelter, meditate on the grounds of confidence and joy which the believer has in the contemplation of his Lord's Ascension. In doing so, let us state and endeavor to illustrate, two leading and prominent reasons among others, why it was thus necessary and expedient that He should "go away"--why it behooved, not only that Christ should have "suffered these things," but also to have "entered into His glory."\par \par R I. The Ascension of Christ formed the divine attestation to the full completion of His mediatorial work. We have already seen, among other great truths which cluster around the Resurrection, that it may be regarded as a public declaration on the part of the Father, that the wages of sin were all paid--that the penalty of the law had been borne in the person of the Surety-Substitute, who was "delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification."\par \par But legal release frSom the condemning sentence of the law, was not the whole which the Redeemer undertook in the salvation of His Church. It was indeed a vast part of it--to have the chains struck off, the prison-doors opened, and the glorious words pronounced, "There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." The work undertaken by the Great Surety from all eternity had, however, far more stupendous issues. It contemplated nothing short of recovering to man ALL that he had lost and forfeited by the fall. Not onlyT was the flaming sword of the cherubim to be turned away, or quenched in the blood of His cross, but the closed gates of a better than earthly Paradise were to be re-opened. Not only was the divine law to be vindicated and magnified; but the divine love--that love which bathed in sunlight-beams the groves of the first Eden--was to be restored, and the happiness of that endearing communion revived, when "the voice of the Lord God was heard walking in the garden in the cool of the day." In one word, ParadisUe lost was to be Paradise regained. Having overcome the sharpness of death, the great Forerunner was to open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.\par \par How was this glorious achievement--this wondrous consummation to be certified? As the Resurrection of Christ from the dead constituted the public evidence and testimony of the remission of their sins--so His entrance into heaven was to form the pledge and guarantee of His people's final glorification. We have already seen, that in all the mVore prominent and important events of His previous ministry on earth, the adorable Redeemer stood as the Representative of His people; that they were identified with Him--reckoned as participants in His mediatorial work. When He DIED, it was legally counted as if they had died along with Him--when He ROSE, as if they had risen along with Him. So now when He ASCENDED, it was also in His federal or representative character as the Vicar of His Church.\par \par Believers--the members of His mysticalW body, though still left in earth's "Valley of Vision" amid scenes of corruption and death, to grapple with sin and temptation--are yet, again and again, spoken of in Scripture, as if they had already received (by anticipation in the Person of their Head) the great covenanted reward--already been "made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." Let the following passages in proof suffice--"Who HAS raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ." "For our citizenshiXp IS in Heaven." "You have come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God--to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels." "Who HAS made us kings and priests unto God and His Father."\par \par We rejoice, indeed, to contemplate in the ascension of the Redeemer, the fit reward of His own sufferings and humiliation--the fulfillment of His own last prayer, "Now, O Father, glorify You Me with Yourself with the glory which I had with You before the world was." "When HeY had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." "Sat down"--a significant figure--the emblem of rest. The mighty work is done--the Victor is reposing at the close of the campaign--"His rest shall be glorious." But it is more than this. We see in Him the Precursor of a mighty multitude which no man can number, who, in His ascension and glorification, have the pledge and prelude of their own.\par \par To take a feeble earthly simile. A brave leader, in captuZring a city, takes possession of it, not for himself, but in the name of the Sovereign and of his or her people. So does the Divine ascending Conqueror, in entering the Heavenly Jerusalem, take possession of it in the name of His Church on earth--"the Queen" who is yet to "stand at His right hand in gold of Ophir." The words of the Prophet, in which he speaks of the members, we may apply for a moment, in part, to their great Head--"He shall enter," says Isaiah, "into peace; they shall rest in their beds, [each one walking in His uprightness." He, their Representative, enters into His own purchased peace--the enjoyment of His stipulated reward. And "they" (they His people) "shall rest!" Their work too is done; for He has done it for them--and if they have not yet entered, like their Precursor, into the realms of heavenly peace--if the night of earth must intervene before the morning break--they may "rest in their beds" and dream of a glorious day-dawn--even of "walking in the uprightness" of their crowned a\nd exalted Redeemer--waiting for the joyous hour when His voice will be heard--"Awake and sing, you that dwell in dust." One in mystical union now, they can anticipate the hour, when they shall be one in full vision and fruition, and so be "ever with the Lord."\par \par And, moreover, as it is God the Father who is represented as the efficient Agent in all the previous parts and stages of the Redeemer's mediatorial work--"God so loved the world"--"Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation"--"I]t pleased the Lord to bruise Him"--"Whereof He has given assurance unto all men in that He has raised Him from the dead"--so this same adorable First person in the Ever-Blessed Trinity, is described as setting His seal to the great public act of ascension and enthronement--welcoming, in the Person of the Representative Head, all the believing members. "HE has set Him at His own right hand in heavenly places" "Wherefore God also has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name that is above every name." When w^e hearken, therefore, to the Father saying to His Divine Son--"Sit on My right hand"--we listen, in that coronation welcome, to more than a personal address. We hear in it the authority addressed to His Church for the glorification of all its members; that they are served heirs in Him to their regal honors--that will they be in possession of the stipulated reward. "With gladness and rejoicing they shall be brought--they shall enter into the King's palace." It is the Father welcoming the Elder and the Prod_igal Son in one, within the patrimonial halls. As He looks to the once ragged and tattered outcast, now wearing the best robe and jeweled ring and glittering sandals, and then from Him to a truer "Elder Brother" than that depicted in the parable, even the Divine Being who had brought back the wanderer from spiritual poverty and death to blessedness and life--He exclaims, "Son, You are ever with Me, and all that I have is Your. It was fit that we should make merry and be glad--for this Your brother was dea`d and is alive again, and was lost and is found."\par \par II. Another special reason for Christ's Ascension, was in order that the gift of the Holy Spirit might be conferred upon the Church. When that first intimation to His disciples of His approaching departure fell from the Savior's lips, we may picture to ourselves the agonizing feelings of the attached and loving band. 'What!' would doubtless have been their exclamation, had their individual and united thoughts found utterance in words. 'Wahat! Go away! Can it be that these brief years of sacred and devout communion are to vanish like a dream? Can it be that we are to be severed from Him who has been to us better than the best of masters and the fondest of parents?--that we are to be left as sheep without a shepherd, orphaned, forlorn, in a desolate world? This is death indeed.'\par \par Stranger still, perhaps, would be the first impression made by the words in which the sudden announcement was conveyed. "It is necessary." How cabn it possibly be so? How can it possibly be better, for us, timid and inexperienced mariners, to be left without our Pilot to buffet these stormy seas? How can it be better for us, a helpless and trembling flock, to be deprived of the Great Pastor's presence; abandoned to grapple, as best we can, with the briars and thorns of the wilderness? How often has He sought that among us which was lost, and brought again that which was driven away, and bound up that which was broken, and strengthened that which wacs sick! When the storm was gathering overhead, and the wolf was prowling on our path, we had this sure cleft--the shadow of this "Great Rock" ever to repair to, for safety and repose. But now, we shall be left unsheltered and unsuccoured in the dark and cloudy day! Oh, need we wonder that as the Divine Redeemer, on the occasion referred to, looked around on the sad faces and, perhaps, tear-dimmed eyes which at that moment met His own, He added, "And because I have said these things unto you, sorrow has fidlled your hearts."\par \par But having stated the startling fact, He proceeds to assign one very special reason for this departure and its expediency\endash that is, that there was a divine Agent, a heavenly Comforter, to come in His stead--whose presence in the Church would compensate, and more than compensate, for His own absence. "It is necessary for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart, I will send Him unto you." In His valedictory ediscourse, again and again does He revert to the same cheering truth. As there is often some one prominent thought which fills the mind of a dying parent when he gathers his children around his couch, some one special charge which he endeavors by reiteration vividly to impress on their memories--so does this coming of "the Comforter" seem to be the leading thought or theme of consolation on which the Redeemer fondly dwells, as His own dying hour approaches.\par \par The advent of the glorious Thfird person in the adorable Trinity is elsewhere, in more passages than one, said to be contingent or dependent on the Savior's departure. "The Holy Spirit was not yet given because that Jesus was not yet glorified." No sooner did the ascension take place, than the bereft men of Galilee returned from Mount Olivet to Jerusalem, to wait, according to the last injunction of their ascending Lord, "for the promise of the Father." Day after day they continued in profound expectancy of its fulfillment. In the litgtle room--the upper chamber--where the infant Church was gathered--ofttimes, we may well believe, would the cry ascend, 'Lord, fulfill Your gracious assurance! Did You not say, "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven, give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him." Remember this word unto Your servants, upon which You have caused them to hope!'\par \par And there were more reasons than one for their anxiety. The advent of thhe Paraclete would confer new spiritual powers on themselves--communicating superhuman strength for their gigantic labors, out of weakness making them strong, giving efficacy to their teaching, opening hard hearts and prejudiced intellects and seared consciences to the mighty truths of the Gospel--in one word, inspiring them with the certainty of success in an otherwise hopeless enterprise. But more than this--It was of the last importance to have some outward and even miraculous attestation to the fact oif the Savior's ascension. These disciples had been the witnesses of His humiliation, some of them had been present at His baptism in the Jordan, others at His agony in the Garden, and His death on Calvary; they had climbed (some by slow incredulous steps) to a firm assurance of His Resurrection. All these momentous facts had, moreover, been authenticated and accredited by heavenly signs and witnesses--the descent of the dove and the voice at His baptism--the angels strengthening Him in His agony--the rockjs rending, the graves opening, and the heavens darkening at His crucifixion--the angels in white sitting within His vacant grave. But now He had vanished from their view!--a cloud had received Him out of their sight. He had told them He was about to ascend to His Father and their Father. They had accompanied Him to Bethany; they had seen His glorified shape borne upwards on the wings of a cloud--higher and yet higher that Divine form rose, until, reducing into a speck, it was lost in the hazy distance. Waks all this an airy dream--a strange delusion? It could not be; their senses could not be mistaken, their eyes could not have been deceived in the loved and well-known Person--their ears could not have been deceived in the tones of the loving voice and its last tender benediction.\par \par But how is their belief to be verified? It is not, in the case of the Ascension, as it was in the case of the Resurrection! They could visit personally and scrutinize the Tomb. They had it in their power orallyl to sift and compare the testimony of witnesses. But they have no longer access to the ascended and glorified body, to ascertain by touch its personal identity with that of their own beloved Master who was crucified. They cannot follow that chariot-cloud in its mysterious flight; they can send no messenger; they can delegate no Mary up to these untraveled heavenly heights with the question--They have taken away my Lord, tell me where they have laid Him!\par \par It was all important therefore, tmhat, as in the case of the other momentous incidents in the Incarnation, some visible miraculous sign should be given to the Church, to attest and certify the reality of the Savior's reign at the Father's right hand. Such a distinct proof He Himself promised before He departed, in the descent of the Holy Spirit. With what intense and longing eagerness, then, must His disciples have looked for this crowning evidence of their Lord's mission and divinity. It would be with them the testing, or rather the confnirmatory, article in their creed. Let there be failure in this last promise, and they would be driven back again on their own faithless exclamation, "We TRUSTED it had been He who would have redeemed Israel." As day after day elapsed, how trying would be the postponement! Often would the question pass from lip to lip, 'Is there no sign yet of His appearing? Why tarry the wheels of His chariot?' No weary watcher on a stormy sea, no lonely castaway on a night of tempest, would more wistfully long for the daown, than these anxious twelve!\par \par But come it does at last. "The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, unto the soul that seeks Him!" On the day of Pentecost--assembled in loving communion ("they are all with one accord in one place")--suddenly, a rustling is heard. It is the "sound of a rushing wind;" and forked radiant flames, like tongues of fire, crown the heads of the praying disciples. The Lord descended of old, first in the tempest, then in the fire, and then revealed Himself in "pthe still small voice." But on this occasion it is not the soft whisper, it is the voice of power--"the Power of the Holy Spirit." That rushing wind symbolized the bestowment of a new energy in proclaiming the glorious truths of the Gospel. Though numerically feeble, a mere handful of untutored and unlettered men, their Lord has given the word, and great is the company of those that publish it. Hear with what remarkable boldness and confidence Peter (the inspired minister of that hour) speaks, regarding tqhe wondrous attestation of the Savior's ascension, which had just been given. How fully we feel them to be the words of a man whose whole soul had now, by that miraculous confirmatory sign, been finally and forever surrendered to the service of his exalted Master--"This Jesus has God raised up, whereof all are witnesses--therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has shed forth this, which you now see and hear. Therefore let all trhe house of Israel know assuredly, that God has made that same Jesus whom you have crucified both Lord and Christ."\par \par Yes! glorious proof and assurance that "that same Jesus" who had vanished from their sight a few days before, from one of the slopes of Olivet, had really entered heaven and taken His seat on His kingly throne! By that baptism of fire, the Ascension is left no longer a matter of faith, or conjecture, or probability. It is proclaimed a great fact in the development of the sscheme of Redemption. The feeble infant Church on earth may unite with the ingathered ransomed of the heavenly Jerusalem--"You have ascended on high, You have led captivity captive." "The Lord has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises. Sing praises to our King, sing praises."\par \par The true Joseph's exaltation being completed, He can send the message of comfort--the grain-sacks of spiritual blessings to His brethren. Our Heavenly Ambassadtor having entered the celestial courts, and signed as Mediator of the Church the great treaty of peace, can send now back a glorious Divine delegate, loaded with gifts, which He can dispense "even to the rebellious"!\par \par Who, indeed, can read the wondrous story of these days, as it is simply recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, but must be conscious that a new era had dawned on the Church and on the world! It is remarkable, that in the days of the Savior's personal ministry, the number of uconversions was small. Even His Divine words and wondrous works seemed to make comparatively little way in breaking down Jewish prejudice and Gentile unbelief. After three years of preaching and miracle--what was His success? See the muster-roll of the Church immediately before Pentecost--"The number of the names together were about an hundred and twenty." He seemed purposely to restrain His own power, in order to magnify the grace and work of the Holy Spirit in the new dispensation which this Divine agenvt was to inaugurate. No sooner, however, are the windows of heaven opened, no sooner does the Promised Comforter descend, than unprecedented results follow. Hard hearts are broken, blinded eyes are opened, dry eyes are unsealed, and scoffing souls propound the question, "What must we do to be saved?" The Lord is once more in His holy place, as in Mount Sinai--rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks. "You, O God, did send a plentiful rain, whereby You did confirm Your inheritance when it wasw weary."\par \par Oh when the wondering disciples are witnesses of these moral miracles--thousands on thousands flying as doves to their windows, and nations, through their representatives then gathered at Jerusalem, "born in a day"--whatever may have been the sorrow with which they once heard of their divine Master's severance from them; however deeply, since the hour they parted from Him on Olivet, they might have missed His personal companionship and love--they would cease at all events now txo marvel at His saying or to dispute the expediency of His announced purpose--"It is necessary for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart, I will send Him unto you."\par \par Lord, come! hide us in this new cleft of the one Glorious Rock--and as the Beloved Disciple tells us he was "in the Spirit," when his eyes were opened to the transcendent visions and his ears to the wondrous words of his ascended Lord, so may He open our ears to receive the soul-stirring message which gave heart-cheer to the lonely exile of Patmos, "Fear not; I am He who lives and was dead, and behold! I am alive for evermore!"\par \par "Grant, we beseech you, Almighty God, that like as we do believe Your only begotten Son the Lord Jesus Christ, to have ascended into the heavens--so we may also in heart and mind there ascend, and with Him continually dwell, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end."\par \cf1\fs23\par } 11 Ua12 Christ Ascended{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CHRIST ASCENDED\par \par "He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things."--Eph. 4:10\par \par We have listened in our last, to the glorious tidings, another echo from the Rock of Ages--"The Lord has risen!" We have stoL{ out on this rebellious world until it was utterly consumed, is standing at the moment, at the altar of incense, presenting our prayers for mercy, and officiating there as our great High Priest." \endash Harris\par \par With the contemplation of every new Rock-cleft, the "treasures hidden in Christ" seem to grow upon us, not only in number and variety, but in value and preciousness.\par \par This is specially the case in meditating on the Redeemer as the INTERCESSOR of His Church and p|eople. In that beautiful grouping of the great apostle's "Confidences" in his divine Lord, to which we have more than once adverted, the crowning one is that which heads this chapter--"It is Christ who died; yes, rather, who is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God; who also makes intercession for us!" It is when climbing, step by step, he reaches this height of his high argument, that he turns round with the challenge, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"\par \par The in}tercession of the Savior is based on His atonement. It has been well defined as "the efficacious virtue of the atonement perpetuated by a divine official act." Some theological writers have ingeniously drawn an analogy between creation and providence, atonement and intercession; that just as Providence is the sustaining of the creative work--so that if Christ's continual upholding arm were withdrawn, the outer material world would soon lapse into disorganization--so, the intercession of Jesus is the carry~ing out, and carrying on, of His propitiatory and mediatorial work--the complement of the great salvation consummated on Calvary.\par \par The Atonement, indeed, is in itself complete; just as this natural creation, (to revert to the analogy), was complete, when it came in all its glorious mechanism from the hands of God, and was pronounced "very good." But in order to perpetuate the benefits of Redemption, and make them available for His people, it is needful for Him, as the High Priest, to continue His priestly office "at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens--a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man." The temple-service of old was the shadow of these sublime heavenly things. The Jewish High Priest, having offered on the great day of Atonement the sacrificial oblation on the altar of burnt-offering, attired himself in a dress of pure white linen--linen robes, and linen belt, and linen mitre, white from head to foot. Thus arrayed, he carried the blood in one hand, and the censer of live coals in the other, into the Most Holy place. Beating some fragrant incense small, he mixes it with the burning coals. A grateful cloud arises--the whole Temple Court is redolent with the perfume, and enveloped in smoke.\par \par Significant type, surely, of Him who has entered through the rent veil of His own crucified body into the Holiest of all; carrying with Him the memorials of His own precious blood-shedding and the fragrant incense of His adorable merits. As the Jewish High Priest sprinkled the blood on the pavement before the mercy-seat, as well as on the mercy-seat; so, our, Divine High Priest sprinkled His blood first on the floor of earth where He shed it, and now He sprinkles it on the throne of heaven. There, with the true incense and fire He pleads. Attired in the white linen vesture of His perfect obedience and righteousness, He confesses His people's sins--He stands between the congregation in the outer court of earth and the Divine Shekinah-glory. The mercy-seat is sprinkled; He waves the fragrant censer--and the whole heavenly house is filled with the odor of the incense.\par \par We dare not, indeed, presume to speculate or dogmatize on the MANNER of this intercession. It is a silent inarticulate speech and pleading. The voice of Abel's blood is represented, by a bold figure, as crying from the ground. That blood, it need not be remarked, was in reality mute. So doubtless is it with our Divine Intercessor. There may be no articulate accents, no audible utterances. He sprinkles no material blood. But this we know, that He has carried with Him to His intercessory throne a glorified body, still bearing the visible marks of earthly humiliation and suffering--the perpetual memorials of His atoning sacrifice--so that that blood may still be said to have a voice before the throne--"The blood of sprinkling which speaks better things than that of Abel." When on earth He poured out His soul "in strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, He was heard in that He feared." In heaven, He pleads in silence; His wounds are His argument; He is heard in that He suffered!\par \par But in this, we are anticipating. We shall proceed, as the most befitting method of illustrating the great truth, to enumerate one or two characteristics of the Savior's intercession.\par \par I. It is a RIGHTEOUS Intercession. This is the attribute which specially suggests itself to the apostle John in his First Epistle, where, under a new figure, he thus speaks of his Lord's intercessory work--"We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous." "The Righteous"--a word which refers not so much to the righteousness of the Savior's person, as to the righteousness of His claim in behalf of His people. It is the Divine Advocate appealing to the equity of the Judge--resting His plea on the majesty of justice. An earthly counsel is only the hired and often a dishonest pleader. The righteousness or unrighteousness of the cause he has espoused is no matter to him. His sole object is to gain his client's case; although even in the successful conducting of it before an earthly tribunal, he may have the unuttered conviction of guilt and criminality, and that justice is evaded or perverted. Varied, also, are his appeals to the pity of the jury or the mercy of the judge. Many a cause is determined, not on its merits, but by skillful and adroit pleadings, by dexterous sophistry, or by the wizardry of eloquence!\par \par Not so is it with the Great Intercessor. He pleads not, indeed, the personal innocence of His clients. On the ground of their own merits, they stand, in the sight of heaven, convicted and condemned--destitute of all argument to support their cause. But they are made righteous through the righteousness of Him, their federal Head and Surety-Redeemer. The merits of His obedience and death constitute His plea on their behalf. It is because "He bore the sin of many," that He makes "intercession for the transgressors." In thus, therefore, advocating the cause of His people, it is not the plea of the suppliant imploring mercy--the appeal of an servile petitioner. It is a plea of right. It is the triumphant Conqueror claiming His stipulated reward. It is the Covenant-Surety claiming the fulfillment of the Father's promise.\par \par Addressing His Father in His last intercessory prayer, He appeals to Him in His character of Righteous. "O holy Father," "O righteous Father." All the blessings of the atonement which are to us the free gifts of free grace, are to Him of debt. They are the purchase of His dying love. They come to Him, and through Him to us, as an old writer expresses it, "with the mark of the cross and the print of nails." This Righteous Advocate, standing before the throne, has only to utter His omnipotent formula, "Father, I will!" And all that is within the compass of omnipotence to bestow is His--"Son, You are ever with Me, and all that I have is Yours!"\par \par II. This leads naturally to a second characteristic resulting from the one just mentioned\endash that is, that it is a PREVAILING Intercession. Jesus is emphatically "the Prince" who has power with God and "prevails." All power has been committed to Him. Him "the Father hears always." They are His own remarkable words in the 16th chapter of John--"In that day you will no longer ask me anything. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf."\par \par What does He mean by this? Is it not that the very mention of His all-prevailing name in the Father's ears, will be sufficient to ensure the request of His people being heard and their claims regarded. "Ask in My name." As if He had said, 'It will dispense with the need of My formally pleading on your behalf. It will itself be a passport to the Father's kind regard. So intensely does He love Me for My work's sake and righteousness' sake, that you have only to give utterance to "the name that is above every name," and its music will unlock to you the heart of God.'\par \par How prevailing that name and that plea moreover must be, when we look to the host of petitioners who are warranted to use it. It is a beautiful part of the vision of the pleading covenant-angel in Revelation, with "the censer full of much incense" in his hand, that they are "the prayers of ALL the saints," which, perfumed with His adorable merits, ascend before God's throne and are accepted! It is not merely the pleadings of patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs, men strong in faith giving glory to God. Neither is it the prayers enshrined and intoned in imposing ritual, rising from the great congregation amid ornate temples, and borne on the wings of enchanting music--but the groan, the glance, the tear, the tremulous aspiration of smitten penitents, the veriest lisping of infant tongues; the unlettered petitions morning and evening of the cottage home, where the earthen floor is knelt upon, where the only altar is the altar of the lowly heart, and the sacrifice that of a broken and contrite spirit. It may be affirmed of the Father regarding one and all of these pleadings of the Divine Intercessor, in the prophetic words of the Psalmist, "You have given Him His heart's desire, and have not withheld the request of His lips."\par \par Nor, having Him thus as our prevailing Intercessor, do we stand in need of any other auxiliary, any other advocacy. On the great day of atonement in the Jewish Temple-service of old, no Levite, no subordinate Temple officer was permitted to assist the High Priest, either in the sacrificial offering, or in the subsequent carrying of the blood and incense. No voice within the veil was allowed to be heard, but his. The congregation stood in the outer court. No other footstep dared venture within the holy precincts. There were crowds--thousands on thousands close by. But this solitary priest is unaided, unaccompanied, at that solemn hour. Alone he pled; alone he sprinkled the blood; alone he waved the censer.\par \par In like manner, Christ has entered alone into the holy place, having Himself obtained eternal redemption for us. The solitary Surety on earth, He is the solitary Intercessor above. No other voice pleads with the Father; no other priest or minister, saint or angel, can be of any avail in coming between the sinner and God. As on earth He made the prophetic announcement, "I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people there are none with Me" so, standing by the golden Altar above, and stretching down the golden scepter, He, and He only, has the right and prerogative to say, "Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete."\par \par III. It is a PERSONAL Intercession. It is not a mere general advocacy for His Church in its collective capacity--like Aaron rushing between the crowded masses of living and dead when the plague was stopped--but pleading for individual members of that Church with an individual, personal interest, as if each separate case enlisted His sympathy and engrossed His regards. As the High Priest of old wore on his breastplate, gleaming with Urim and Thummin--not the one word Israel--but the separate distinctive names of all its tribes--so also with the Great Antitype. It is not His Church in the aggregate, but the name of each separate believer He has imperishably engraved on His heart. He, the Great SHEPHERD, seated on the heavenly hill and looking down on the earthly pastures, "calls His own sheep by name, and leads them out." He, the great CAPTAIN of Salvation, gazing down on His fighting warriors in the earthly battlefield, is represented as exclaiming, "Him that overcomes, the same shall be clothed in white clothing, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before My Father and His holy angels." He, the mighty INTERCESSOR, watching the assaults of the great Accuser of the brethren, is comforting every faint-heart with the old words addressed to a tempted disciple, "Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for YOU that your faith fail not."\par \par How does John (in speaking of Jesus the Intercessor under the title of Advocate), introduce the Divine Pleader's name? Is it, "If His Church, if His people, if His members sin," they may rush in a crowd to the Intercessor on high, and cast their conjoint petitions at His feet or into His censer? No! there is a beautiful individuality--unit by unit in the mighty family of the ransomed have the comfort of it, "If ANY MAN sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous." Blessed truth! As in His own impressive parable of the Good Shepherd, He follows the ONE erring wanderer until He finds it--the one stray sheep engrossing all His sympathies, as if He had no thought, no room in His heart but for the ONE.\par \par So also, in His intercessory work. He has a loving regard for each separate child of His redeemed family; He carries the case of each before God. The 144,000 harpists on the sea of glass--the representatives of the Church of the glorified--do not exclude His tender concern in those who are still suppliants in the outer courts. His Infinite wisdom, power, and love, are the Divine guarantees that none can be overlooked; none left unsuccoured. An invisible golden chain links every tempest-tossed vessel to the eternal throne. Zechariah's description of Joshua, the High Priest, is a faithful portraiture of each saint of God to this hour. Satan at his right hand ("the public prosecutor") resisting him; pleading against him; advocating his overthrow. But at his other side stands a Defender mightier than the mightiest--the Divine Angel-Intercessor, saying, "The Lord rebuke you--Is not this (this ONE) a brand plucked out of the fire?" And that personal intercession will never cease, from the hour when the believer is first brought a lowly suppliant to the foot of the cross, until the final petition (unheard by weeping relatives in the death-chamber on earth) ascends from the lips of the Great Intercessor in heaven, "Father, I will, that they also whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory."\par \par IV. It is a MERCIFUL and COMPASSIONATE Intercession. On earth the successful mediator for the oppressed and suffering--the successful philanthropist--is, generally speaking, not the man of stern nerve and iron will; but rather, the possessor of keen and tender sensibilities, who can himself enter into the tale of sorrow; who, it may be, from dear-bought experience, can make the cause of the wretched his own. The most potent advocate of the captive, is he who has himself been familiar with the wrongs he denounces. He who would most successfully plead--indeed, who has most successfully pleaded the cause of the slave, is the man who is the liberated slave himself; who has had personal experience of the cruelty and indignity of the tyrant's scourge.\par \par Jesus is a compassionate Intercessor--"a merciful"--as we have seen Him to be a "faithful High Priest;" for He can enter with liveliest sensibility into all the diversities of His people's experience. Their every pang and sorrow He has Himself endured. "In all their afflictions He was afflicted." What a confidence this merciful character of the Great High Priest gives in approaching His intercessory throne, and soliciting His direction and guidance! Even on earth, what a joy and comfort it is in seasons of difficulty, to resort to a tried and loving friend, in whose tenderness and affection you can place unhesitating reliance! What an ease to unbosom in that brother's ear the difficulty that is harassing you, and solicit his wise and faithful counsel! Jesus is this Blessed resort in all time of your tribulation!\par \par  What a privilege, when Providence is dark and duty is perplexing, to repair immediately to this "Wonderful Counselor;" to take your case, as Hezekiah did Rabshakeh's letter, spreading it out before Him in prayer, and saying in simple faith, "I am oppressed, undertake for me." An earthly advocate may ably conduct the cause confided to him, and vindicate or assert disputed rights. But it is not, we repeat, necessarily any more than the work of a hired pleader. He may never have seen his client's face, or claimed his acquaintance, far less his friendship. Not so the Heavenly Advocate. "We have not an High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." "He is not ashamed to call us brethren." "I have called you friends." In the Epistle of James, God--"the Lord Almighty"--is said to hear the cry of the defrauded reaper--the common laborer--when he utters the appeal of oppressed and downtrodden poverty. How much more will the cries of His spiritual children enter with acceptance into the ears of their Intercessor! How tenderly will He compassionate, protect, defend, those whom He has redeemed with His own precious blood!\par \par V. Finally. It is an UNCHANGING Intercession. Under the Levitical economy, the intercessor for the nation was removed by death. It was a temporary, hereditary, transmissible priesthood. Ever and always the nation was clothed in sackcloth, as they mourned their departed ecclesiastical head.\par \par Not so Jesus! "This man because He continues ever, has an UNCHANGEABLE PRIESTHOOD." He is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life. Many a good and righteous cause on earth has been lost by the death of its advocate. But our Advocate, as He is without beginning of days, is without end of years. As the tinkling bells of the High Priest's vestments were heard by the crowd in the outer court, while he himself was ministering within the veil--the sound conveying to them the assurance that he was still engaged in the solemn act of intercession--so the ear of faith can still catch up the music of these sacred chimes--these silver bells in heaven--"Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound!"\par \par The Jewish Hierarch acted as the nation's Intercessor for one day only--once every year--and for only a part of that one day. But, day without night is our Intercessor pleading. He never intermits; His love never cools; His ardor never decays! The true Moses on the Heavenly Rephidim, His hands never grow heavy; for of Him it is sublimely said, "He faints not, neither is weary." Nor, we believe (and as we shall in a subsequent chapter more fully unfold), will He ever entirely abdicate His office as the Divine medium of communion and communion between God and His people. Even in the Church triumphant, "the Son," we read, is "consecrated for evermore." "He ever lives to make intercession for us."\par \par Thus, then, have we endeavored briefly to illustrate some of the characteristics of the Redeemer's Intercession; as a Righteous Intercession; a Prevalent Intercession; a Merciful Intercession; an Unchanging Intercession.\par \par In conclusion, let us seek to receive this great truth, not as a figure of speech, but as a glorious and sublime verity. Not a few are at times tempted to say, 'If Christ were still among us; if He still trod our streets as once He did those of Nazareth and Jerusalem; if He ministered on our shores as once He did on those of Jordan and Gennesaret; if PENITENCE could still creep, as it did of old, unbidden to His feet, to pour out in silent tears its tale of sorrow; if trembling CONVICTION could sneak (Nicodemus like) under the curtain of night to listen to the Heavenly Teacher's loving tones; if SORROW could rush, as once it did, with throbbing emotion, and cry out, "Lord, if You had been here, our brother would not have died;" if I could take my darling child, as once the Jewish mother did, and hurry through the crowd to receive the omnipotent touch and the healing word, all would be different.\par \par But alas! He is invisible. I am told to pray; but in vain I look for that countenance of compassion. In vain I listen at my threshold for that footfall of love! My sick chamber is like John's place of exile, a lonely Patmos--but, unlike him, I behold no one in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. I see no symbol, I hear no voice! I pray, but it is to a Savior-Intercessor I do not see!'\par \par "Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed--blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed." "Whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see Him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." Yes! prayer can still carry you into that glorious and glorified Presence, and the hand of faith can still touch as though He was on earth, the hem of His garment! Jesus of Nazareth still passes by. The spiritually blind and impotent can still breathe the prayer for mercy--for He ever "lives!"\par \par Think for a moment what it would be were that intercession suspended? Or, recurring once more to the analogy with which we started, think what this fair creation of ours would be, were the Divine Providential hand to be withdrawn! All would immediately collapse! Chaos and night would again rise to the ascendant, and the world rock to ruin. And what would be the result to the spiritual world--the Church--were the intercession of its Head intermitted? How would every Asahel become a Ready-to-halt; every warrior's hand drop paralyzed on the battle-field. It is sad to be deprived of the loving sympathy and counsel of the earthly friend we most valued--when distance separates, or coldness estranges; or (saddest of all) when death puts his irrevocable seal on the sweet counsels of the past.\par \par What must it be were we deprived of the prayers and counsels and sympathies of Jesus! See that you forfeit not these by sin. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." Oh, saddest of all responses from the Heavenly Oracle is that of this Righteous Intercessor, when He looks down on His faithless people "hastening after another god," and says, "Their drink-offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into My lips."\par \par God grant that we may know, from personal experience, the blessedness of resorting to to such a Rock-cleft as this--"He shall hide me in His pavilion, in the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me, He shall set me up upon a Rock." The Divine Intercessor, the Mighty Pleader before the throne issues the gracious invitation--"Come, My people, enter into your chambers, and shut your doors behind you--hide yourself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast." Let it be ours to respond with the ardent aspiration, the votive prayer\endash "Be to me a protecting rock of safety, where I am always welcome. Give the order to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress." Psalm 71:3\par \cf1\fs23\par } )qq13 Christ the Intercessor{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CHRIST THE INTERCESSOR\par \par "Who also makes intercession for us." \endash Romans 8:34\par \par "He who might have been placing a vial of wrath in the hand of every angel around His throne, with a commission to pour itzf kings and Lord of lords!" Rev. 19:16\par \par In speaking of the Ascension of the Divine Redeemer in a preceding chapter, we have already so far anticipated consideration of the Rock-cleft which is now to engage our attention--the Kingship of Christ--"Set as King upon His holy hill of Zion"--made "Head over all things to His Church." But the theme is one which volumes cannot exhaust. Well might the inspired Psalmist thus speak of it. "My heart overflows with a beautiful thought! I will recite a lovely poem to the king, for my tongue is like the pen of a skillful poet."\par \par How sweet should be the music of these words to every believing heart--"He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death--even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name--that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."\par \par When He disappeared from the sight of the eleven disciples on Mount Olivet, His extended hands poured a priestly benediction on these representatives of the Church of the future. But it is as a King He is next pictured to us in the page of inspiration. In the lofty poetry of the Psalmist, it is as a King He enters heaven. The summons of His attending retinue outside the celestial portals is--"Lift up your heads, O you gates; and be lifted up, you everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in." The response is made, "Who is this King of glory?" And the reply is returned, "The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. The Lord Almighty, He is the King of glory."\par \par His Regal office, indeed, did not date its commencement with His reign at the right hand of God. In human language, that was only the date of His public investiture with royal honors--when, in phrase borrowed from earthly coronations, He was said to be "anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows,"--after being "made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, He was crowned with glory and honor." But His Kingship had a more ancient pedigree. He was designated King of His Church from the ages of eternity. "I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before ever the earth was." Among other types, His royal dignity was foreshown in the person of MELCHISEDEK, who was "King of Salem as well as Priest of the Most High God." Also in the people of King DAVID and Solomon--the former, with more special reference to the years preceding His resurrection, when He was "the Man of sorrows"--reproach often breaking His heart--a King in the midst of enemies--while SOLOMON, in the splendor of his reign, was typical of the risen and glorified Head of His people; riding forth in the chariot of salvation, surrounded with the valiant of His spiritual Israel; inaugurating, as the ascended monarch of the Church, the services of the Heavenly Temple.\par \par His REGAL POWER was predicted by the lips of patriarchs and prophets, from the Shiloh of Jacob to the Messiah-King of Zechariah. And when His advent in the flesh did take place; though His only apparent palace was a stable at Bethlehem, and His throne a manger; yet, even at His birth, representative potentates were present to do Him homage, bearing their KINGLY GIFTS of "gold, and frankincense, and myrrh." Throughout the period of His Incarnation--though wearing a garment of humiliation and a crown of thorns--He was clothed too with an invisible robe of glory and honor. Like some of our own ancient monarchs, He was King in disguise; a sovereign in beggar's garb. Ever and always the golden tassel of royalty revealed itself under the assumed ragged attire--while, on one memorable occasion, branches of royal palm strewed the highway across Mount Olivet--and the air rang with the acclamation--"Hosanna to the Son of David--Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord!" In the very moment of His deepest abasement, in answer to the interrogation of a heathen judge, "Are You a King, then?" Jesus answered, "Yes, it is as you say."\par \par It is important, moreover, to regard the Kingly office of Christ as the complement of His Priestly functions. Or, rather, it is the combination of the two which imparts to the believer surpassing comfort and confidence. As the great covenant angel, He has both the censer and the scepter; while standing robed by the altar, He has "a crown of pure gold put upon His head." All earthly rule is but the shadow of this great prototype of Sovereignty. The correct view, indeed, to take of Christ's Kingship, is not that of a mere figure or emblem derived from the rule of earthly monarchs; but rather are earthly crowns and scepters derivations and emanations from His great central everlasting throne. They have their archetype or primal pattern in the kingdom of heaven--in the Person and dignity of Him who is "forever sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens."\par \par The earthly sovereignty with which we are familiar, may serve to suggest a few simple thoughts regarding the mediatorial Kingship of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ, our exalted King, has a THRONE. It is a throne of Righteousness. Righteousness is at the foundation of all rule. History and experience are ever reading and rereading, that the earthly throne not established in righteousness--based on tyranny and wrong--bolstered up by oppression and treachery--will, sooner or later, totter to its fall. The Intercessory and Kingly offices of Christ, are alike founded on the great work of righteousness wrought out and completed by Him on earth. "Righteousness will be His belt and faithfulness the sash around His waist." "This is the name whereby He is called--The Lord our Righteousness." It forms the theme of adoration alike of His Church below and of the Church of the first-born in Heaven, as they "speak of the might of His awesome acts and the glorious majesty of His Kingdom." "You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your fellows. All Your garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces whereby they have made You glad."\par \par The Lord Jesus, our exalted King, has a SCEPTER. It is called "the rod of His power" "The Lord shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion." By it He is said to rule in the midst of His enemies. As His throne is a throne of righteousness, so this "scepter of His kingdom is a righteous scepter." In the proclamation of the Gospel, His design is to vindicate the righteousness of His law in the salvation of sinners, and to foster and advance the cause of righteousness among His people. That Gospel is "the little Book" which the angel in the apocalyptic vision held in his hand, when he was seen flying with it open in the midst of heaven. In the eye of the world's wisdom, a "little Book," a little Scepter, a feeble rod. But "the wisdom of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." "Is not My word like as a fire? says the Lord; and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?" "The Spirit of the Lord," was the opening sentence of the Messiah's ministry, "is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach glad tidings to the meek." And when that ministry was terminating, and He was about to delegate the rod of His power to others, this was still the parting apostolic commission, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."\par \par Nobly did His followers fulfill His royal decree. Hear the boldest and bravest of these ambassadors--the great apostle of the Gentiles. Whether he stood amid the soldiers and senators of imperial Rome, or among the merchant princes of Corinth, or the sailors on the Adriatic Sea, or the cultured philosophers on the Athenian Areopagus--hear him proclaiming, as he holds out the same golden scepter delegated to him by his heavenly King--"I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ--for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one who believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."\par \par This suggests, that Jesus Christ our Divine King has, like earthly sovereigns, subordinate officers to carry on the administration of His vast empire. We cannot withdraw the veil which screens the upper sanctuary. Could we do so, doubtless we should find "the spirits of the just made perfect" engaged in ceaseless embassies and ministries of love in behalf of their exalted and glorified Head--employed in bringing to Him royal revenues of glory from distant worlds. In one of the beautiful figurations of the Apocalypse, the armies of heaven (angelic natures as well as the redeemed) are represented as "following Him upon white horses."\par \par But we know with certainty that He has appointed such officers in His Church and kingdom on earth, to gather in "ransomed spoil" against the day of His final appearing and enthronement as Lord of all. He has selected, moreover, these subordinate ministers of His court, not from among angels, not from among the unsinning inhabitants of heaven; but from those whom He has purchased with His own blood--dust and ashes--earthen vessels--with no badge of distinction or human greatness--often purposely the weakest instrumentality, that the excellency and the power may appear to be of Him alone. "As My Father sent Me," said He, as He invested His disciples with divine authority, "even so send I you." These specially gifted and endowed office-bearers of the Gospel age, clothed with miraculous powers needful for laying and consolidating the Church's foundations, are indeed now withdrawn. But while the extraordinary ministrations have ceased, the ordinary remain. The "prophets and apostles" have been followed by "pastors and teachers"--and though claiming no 'apostolic succession' in the conventional sense of the word--no gift of tongues or of prophesying--yet we assert and maintain the Divine institution of the pastoral office. The King has still heralds, as of old, to prepare His way before Him; and these in their turn are charged by Him to commit their work to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.\par \par Ministerial power is derived, not from priestly ordination or hereditary virtue, but directly from the King Himself. "To every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ." "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God." As the earthly King has his viceroy and ambassador at foreign courts, empowered to speak in his sovereign's name, and to vindicate his sovereign's rights, so He has committed unto His servants "the ministry of reconciliation," and empowered them thus to deliver their high command--"Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we beg you in Christ's stead, be reconciled to God."\par \par As an earthly King has SUBJECTS, so has our heavenly King. His mediatorial sway is indeed, in one sense, UNIVERSAL--"His kingdom rules over all;" "All things were created," not only by Him, but "for Him." His true subjects, however, are composed of the Church, which He has redeemed with His blood--chosen by Him "before the foundation of the world." "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited and redeemed HIS PEOPLE, and has raised up an horn" (horn, the type of kingly rule) "of salvation for us in the house of His servant David." These, His people, are said to become "willing in the day of His power." What day is that? Doubtless it is the momentous era in their lives, when, by the efficacious grace of His Spirit, they are brought to surrender their weapons of rebellion; to renounce the service of Satan, and enroll themselves under the banner of their Savior-King. To effect this result, at times the terrors of the law are employed--those arrows which "are sharp in the hearts of the King's enemies, whereby the people fall under Him." At other times, "the still small voice" proves, as in the case of the prophet, more efficacious than tempest, and earthquake, and fire. The heart is conquered and won by love. A TWO-FOLD CHANGE is at that great crisis-hour undergone.\par \par There is, first, a change of state. The new-born subjects of the King are enrolled among the pardoned. Enemies once, with the sentence of death recorded against them--they receive a full forgiveness--a royal amnesty is extended to them--they are "accepted in the Beloved;" From being by nature and practice (to use the simile in the Song of Solomon), like "pillars of smoke," they become redolent "with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant." Captives once--the chains are struck off; prodigals once--the home of their Father is thrown open. God in His judicial character justifies them--in His paternal character He adopts them. They are received into the number and invested with all the privileges of Sonship.\par \par But, in addition to the change of state, that "day of power" brings along with it a change of character. It not only captures the citadel of the heart, which had long held out against the heavenly King, but all its storehouses and resources are now willingly laid in tribute at His feet. The understanding is enlightened, the affections purified, the will renewed. The body, which was formerly the slave of unrighteousness unto sin, is now consecrated to His service. Inspired with love and loyalty, His people reverence His laws. It is their supreme delight to serve and honor Him. Their interests are identified with His. Their obedience is not the coerced duty of the slave, but the delight of a voluntary heart-surrender. The moral and spiritual transformation is likened to the working of that mighty power which God wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead.\par \par More than this--just as in the case of friends with whom we are in the habit of daily and familiar communion, we insensibly catch up their tone and manner and conversation, and imbibe their tastes and likings--so it is with believers and Him, who, though a King, delights to call them "friends." They gradually become assimilated to the Divine character. They imbibe His spirit; they reflect His image. "The King's daughter," like her Lord, becomes "all glorious within; her clothing, is of wrought gold" (the inwrought graces of the Spirit). So that it may be said of Christ's true people as of the brethren of Gideon, "each one resembled the children of a king."\par \par Thus then the subjects of this Divine Mediator receive the double blessing of having their natures changed as well as their sins pardoned--or as this is briefly but beautifully stated by Peter in his address before the Jewish council, "Him has God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins."\par \par Does the personal question here occur, 'HOW are we to become the subjects of this exalted Sovereign? What is the passport of admission into His royal favor and within His palace-gates? Have we to fight our way to it, like desperate men, through blood and death? Have we in our own strength to scale inaccessible ramparts before reaching the city of the great King?' Listen to the words of the beloved disciple, "As many as received Him to them gave He power (or the right) to become the sons of God, even to those who believe on His name." We have no merit in the attainment of these royal privileges and prerogatives. They are all derived from grace and bestowed through faith. The hand which "delivers from the power of darkness" translates also into "the kingdom of His dear Son." The charter of our rights is delivered to us in the same way as the cure was dispensed to the cripple at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple--"In the name of Jesus of Nazareth rise up and walk." Or, to employ an older Bible simile, He, the true Ahasuerus, extends the regal scepter, and of His sovereign good pleasure confers the rich blessings of His spiritual kingdom.\par \par While, however, it is by grace we are redeemed, we must never forget that HOLINESS is the distinguishing badge of all true subjects of the Savior's rule. This is the characteristic of "the nations of those who are saved"--a holy people. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it through the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, without having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that it should be holy and without blemish." If we are partakers of this heavenly citizenship, inhabitants of this glorious spiritual empire, let us listen to the word of power, divinely recorded as the test of our loyalty and allegiance, "As He who has called you is holy, so be holy in all manner of conversation."\par \par One other observation is suggested by the analogy between an earthly and heavenly sovereign. As a truly great earthly king has ever in view THE GOOD OF HIS SUBJECTS, so it is with our gracious Redeemer. In His beneficent administration, He has constantly and invariably at heart the welfare of each individual member of His spiritual realm. The children of Zion may well be "joyful in their King." They may trust His combined power, and wisdom, and faithfulness; for all things, by immutable covenant, are working together for their good. Jesus is depicted in one of Zechariah's visions, as a royal warrior, riding in the midst of His Church on a "red horse," while "red horses, speckled and white," are in the same vision represented as forming His retinue--varied colored providences--some "white" (clearly understood), others "red and speckled" (or mottled). But all providences are under His control. Even when He afflicts, He afflicts not willingly. Chastisement is one of His love-tokens. This royal Shepherd often seeks out His flock in "the dark and cloudy day." He will not allow trial to go too far. He will not allow His people to be tempted above what they are able to bear. "The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations." We may well, in all that concerns us and ours, TRUST HIM IN THE DARK; remembering that He is infinite in His wisdom and boundless in His resources. Let "the shout of a King" be in the midst of His spiritual Israel. He has but one object in view in all His dealings with them--the "bringing many sons unto glory." And He will not leave His work undone until their salvation is complete. They may well take up the words of the prophet, and say with triumphant assurance, "The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King; He will save us!"\par \par We have thus briefly contemplated some of the characteristics of the rule of Christ over His Church and people. But there is one special phase of His sovereignty constantly unfolded in Scripture, to which we may make a brief reference in closing. It is the exercise of that SOVEREIGNTY OVER HIS ENEMIES. While we are told of "the rod of His strength out of Zion" by which He rules His people, we are told of a rod of iron by which He "breaks" His foes; "dashing them in pieces like a potter's vessel." As the warrior of Edom, He is represented, with blood-stained clothing, coming up from the overthrow of His adversaries--first of all, indeed, "speaking in righteousness--mighty to save;" but to those who reject that righteousness, mighty to destroy and to condemn.--"The Lord," we read in Psalm 110, "said unto my Lord, Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool." "And I saw," says John, "heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He who sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness does He judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns."\par \par The power of His enemies is only temporary--the triumph of His own cause is certain. "The rod of the wicked" will not always "rest upon the lot of the righteous." Despotism, Tyranny, Atheism, Popery, Infidelity, and the other foes of His Church and forces of evil, may do their worst. But every anti-Christian confederacy will at last be broken like a cobweb. "He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet."\par \par It is a comforting and elevating contemplation, and especially in these days, to think of Christ as King of nations, as well as King of His Church--King of Providence as well as King of Grace--and making all events work out His own ends for the advancement of the cause of righteousness. He who manifested Himself in olden time, by His visible interpositions, as God of nature--who made the material world, alike earth and skies, subservient to His purposes--putting a drag on the burning axles of the sun--causing the stars in their courses to fight against Sisera--drying up the tongue of the Red Sea--making the hail of heaven--the white arrows of His quiver--to accomplish the conquest of Israel's foes--("When the Almighty scattered kings, it was white as snow in Salmon")--this sovereign Mediator superintends and controls the revolution of the still more complex and often apparently capricious wheels of Providence. He "holds the stars (emblems of political rulers) in His right hand," as well as "walks in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks."\par \par See how in the bold figure used by the Prophet, He put a bit in the mouth of haughty Sennacherib! That heathen king was the instrument, employed by a Mightier, for the needed chastisement of apostate Judah--"But this is not what he intends, this is not what he has in mind." Never, doubtless, did that tyrant dream, that his whirlwind march through the passes of the Lebanon, so graphically described by the inspired narrator, was at the dictate and to fulfill the sovereign purposes of the great God of armies. He would have spurned the thought of being the rod of Jehovah's anger and the "staff of His indignation." As such, nevertheless, he was employed--the minister of divine retribution; and then, when he had done his work, his legions were scattered like chaff before the whirlwind!\par \par "I am Jehovah of hosts," says the Divine Messiah, "and besides Me there is no God." And all the plottings and counter-plottings of tyrants and despots, civil and ecclesiastical, will be similarly overruled for the spread of His cause, and the defeat and final overthrow of His enemies--when they shall be "consumed with the breath of His mouth; and destroyed with the brightness of His coming."\par \par 'Prince of peace, take to Yourself Your great power, and reign!' "Gird Your sword upon Your thigh, O most mighty, with Your glory and with Your majesty, and in Your majesty, ride prosperously!" We know the day is coming when You shall be "King over all the earth, and Your name one"--when You shall become, as prophecy has described You, "the Desire of all nations"--when to You as the true Shiloh, shall "the gathering of the people be." "Violence shall no more be heard in Your land, wasting nor destruction within Your borders." The nations of those who are saved shall walk in the light of Your millennial glory. The shout of jubilant loyalty recorded in the Canticles will have its true fulfillment in that great coronation-day--"Go forth, O daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon, with the crown with which his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart." What a mighty multitude will bow down before that chariot of victory, in which are yoked the white horses of salvation--a multitude with palms in their hands, out of every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people--the Bride of the King--seated alongside her Lord, wearing on her person the costly jewels (her royal dowry) of "glory, honor, immortality, eternal life!"\par \par Let us, in conclusion, hear this Warrior-king, standing, as He did of old before Joshua with a sword drawn in His hand, and asking each of us individually, "Are you with Me or against Me?" Reader! have you ever pondered all that is comprehended in the reality--"AGAINST Him?" Let Balaam's description be true of you now--one whose "dwelling is in the clefts of the Rock;" so that the same soothsayer's other dreadful words may never be verified in your experience--"I shall see Him (I shall see these clefts), but not near; I shall behold Him, but not near." "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him."\par \cf1\fs23\par } oU14 Christ the King{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CHRIST THE KING\par \par "On his robe and thigh was written this title\endash King or He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising Him from the dead." \endash Acts 17:31\par \par "Because of His alliance with man's nature; because of His sense of man's infirmities; because of all He did and suffered for man's sake as the Son of man, the Son is that Person of the Trinity who is the most fit as well as most worthy to be man's Judge." \endash Burgon.\par \par "He will take His seat upon a throne infinitely exceeding that of earthly or even of celestial princes, clothed with His Father's glory and His own--surrounded with a numberless host of shining attendants. In the meantime, O my Divine Master, may my loins be girded about, and my lamp burning, and my ears be watchful for the blessed signal of Your arrival." \endash Doddridge, 1702.\par \par It is the well-known climax of the most sublime of Litanies, "In the Day of Judgment, good Lord deliver us!" Happy are they who have obeyed the summons of the great Prophet--"Men will flee to caves in the Rocks and to holes in the ground from dread of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth"--and who can thus appropriate the strong confidence embodied in the dying testimony of the chief of apostles--"I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day." "Where are you?" was the shuddering question which rang amid the blighted bowers of Eden, when "the voice of the Lord God was heard walking in the garden in the cool of the day." In a far different sense will that question yet come to be uttered. Alas! in the case of thousands on thousands, the only reply will take the shape of an invocation to rocks and mountains to become barricades in the futile attempt to evade Omniscience.\par \par But on the other hand, the response of earth's first apostate will have a new and glorious meaning in the lips of each member of the ingathered Church, who, washed in the blood and clothed in the righteousness of Jesus, has fled to Him for safety--"I heard Your voice and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself!" Hid myself in Christ; hid myself in the Rock of Ages! Even now may we be enabled, with some good measure of triumphant assurance, to take up the often-repeated words, and sing them in anticipation of that Great Day with its glorious shelter and hiding-place\endash\par "When I soar to worlds unknown,\par See You on Your judgment throne\endash\par Rock of Ages! cleft for me,\par Let me hide myself in Thee!"\par \par It will be observed that the verse selected to head this chapter, and which we may take to guide our thoughts in considering the lofty theme, connects the present Rock-cleft with one already dwelt upon. There is a connection stated between the Resurrection of Christ, and His appearance as judge of all mankind. After announcing that the world is to be judged in righteousness by the Man of God's ordaining, Paul in his address to his Athenian auditory, is represented as adding, "Whereof He has given assurance unto all men in that He has raised Him from the dead." Jesus, in the course of His public ministry, had announced two great truths to His hearers, both wearing the stamp of strangeness and improbability. The one, that He Himself was to die, and by His own inherent power to rise again; that after being laid in the grave, He was to come forth on the third day alive from the sepulcher. And in order to fix this astounding fact in their memories, He associated it with the remarkable analogy or prefiguration in the history of one of their own prophets--"As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Or yet again, investing their honored Temple with a typical significancy, "Destroy this body, and in three days I will raise it up." This was the one well-near incredible fact.\par \par The other was still more marvelous\endash that is, that at some indefinite period of the future, in the exercise of the same power by which He was to quicken His own body, all the millions that ever trod this world were to be awakened from the sleep of death, and cited at His righteous judgement. Everlasting awards were to be apportioned. Those who had done good were to come forth to "the resurrection of life," and those who had done evil to "the resurrection of damnation."\par \par Now the first of these two marvels had been accomplished. The Resurrection of the Redeemer we found to be a historical fact, certified and accredited by "many infallible proofs." And by the fulfillment of the one prodigy, God has set His seal to the indubitable certainty of the other. As surely as the crucified and buried Jesus of Nazareth came forth triumphant from His tomb on the appointed third day, so surely will the slumbering myriads of mankind--the dust of ages and centuries--awake at His summons to judgment. "The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live."\par \par We may make one other preliminary remark suggested by these words of the apostle. They vividly impress upon us the CERTAINTY of that day and that tremendous scene. Other events and transactions in the world are uncertain; their occurrence is contingent on circumstances. In that unwritten roll of our varied futures, there is no one event of which we can feel infallibly sure, except our death. But this Day of judgment is as great an historical verity of the future, as the Resurrection of Christ is of the past. Even the period is not left unfixed and indeterminate. Utterly beyond the presumptuous guesses of human soothsayers, (for "of that day and that hour knows no man,") yet it is known to God. "He has appointed a day." The day is written in the Book of His decrees; and every hour is bringing you and I nearer its solemnities. "Surely," says the now reigning King, as He makes the last inspired communication to His Church, "Surely I come quickly."\par \par What will be the EVENTS of that day?\par \par Let us note, first, THE BELIEVER'S CONFIDENCE AND SECURITY as he contemplates the Person of the enthroned Judge. God is to judge the world in righteousness "by that MAN whom He has ordained." It is "the Son of Man" who is then to come in His glory. He is to come, indeed, in unutterable majesty as the Supreme Jehovah--the co-equal and co-eternal of the Father. But He is to come also in His own glory, as the Mediator of His Church--the effulgence of His Godhead is to be tempered with the tenderness of His humanity. As my Kinsman, my Avenger, the Brother in my nature, the Lord who died for me, who is now pleading for me, He is to stand on that latter day on the earth; to vindicate my cause, to wipe off every aspersion on my character, to ratify my pardon and acceptance before an assembled world, and joyfully to proclaim, in the presence of His Father, as He points to the trophies of redeeming grace and love around Him, "Behold I and the children which You have given Me!"\par \par Observe next, THE SPHERE OR EXTENT OF HIS JUDICIAL PROCEDURE. On that appointed day He is to "judge the WORLD." All that have ever lived are to be gathered within the area of that supreme, tribunal; "Before Him shall be gathered all nations." "All that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God." Not one shall be missing! From earth's teeming mounds--from ocean's hidden caverns. The pauper from his shroud of dust--the king from his gilded monument. Consecrated and unconsecrated ground alike will yield what they have long held in custody. "Every eye shall see Him;" every knee shall bow before Him; either in the reverence of adoring love and joy, or in the unutterable anguish of despair. How solemnly does the Apostle bring home to each of us, alike the universality and personality of that vast assize--"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God."\par \par Next, let us note THE ONE ATTRIBUTE WHICH WILL THEN BE CONSPICUOUSLY DISPLAYED. He is to "judge the world in righteousness." It is to be a throne of uncompromising equity. It is said of the Divine Conqueror of the Apocalypse, who, on His white horse, now heads the armies of heaven, that in "Righteousness He does judge and make war." We never can speak too much or too often of the Reign, or of the Throne of Grace. We never can proclaim too urgently the glad welcome which awaits every stricken penitent. We delight to picture that Throne with its rainbow canopy, and the inscription which surmounts it, "Faithful and just to forgive sins." But the day will come, when the rainbow-tints shall melt and merge into the color of pure white (the type of pure untainted justice)--"I saw," says John, "a great white throne." Righteousness, we have again and again seen, has been the foundation on which the whole work of the Atonement was raised, and Righteousness will form its closing act, the top-stone of the completed Temple.\par \par  Nor are we left in ignorance as to the PRINCIPLE which will regulate that righteous judgement. "He will judge every man according as his work shall be." "And the dead were judged every man according to their works." The silence of the hushed assembly will be broken by this statement, coming from lips from which there is no appeal--"Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile; let him who does right continue to do right; and let him who is holy continue to be holy."\par \par Let it not be supposed that these sentences and awards in any degree encroach on the grand central Gospel truth of salvation by grace--salvation without the deeds or works of the law. Every glorified and happy saint that day will be justified by faith, and by faith alone. If he be accepted, it is "accepted in the Beloved;" if righteous, it is because he stands clothed in the surety-righteousness of his Redeemer; if saved and sheltered, it is because he is sheltered in the "Clefts of the Rock."\par \par But good works, as the RESULT and FRUIT of faith, will, in the case of all Christ's people, be required, not as the grounds of acquittal, but as the EVIDENCES of the reality of their union with Him. In the case of the impenitent, their recompense will be in accordance with life antecedents; so that their future condition will only be the continuance and perpetuation of present character. In their case, evil deeds will form the ground of condemnation, "Whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap." "The fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone." Our Lord's saying will have, in the case of all such, a dreadful but truthful fulfillment, "Wherever the carcase is, there shall the vultures" (of retribution, the vultures of their own sins) "be gathered together." The master lusts, tyrant passions of the present, will form their future tormentors.\par \par Let none forget or overlook the moral aspect of that majestic assize, as the great SIFTING-DAY OF CHARACTER--the Day when the Books of Conscience, and Memory, and Privilege, are to be opened; when life--all life--every page, and chapter, and line in the biography--will be resuscitated and enlivened; when hypocrisy, with its subterfuges, will be exposed; the thousand masks and disguises torn from the faces they have successfully screened, as they confront Him "whose eyes are as a flame of fire, and His feet like unto fine brass as if they burned in a furnace." In the present economy, unerring judging is impossible. The righteous and the wicked are found together promiscuously. The good and the bad fishes are in one net. The tares and the wheat are in the same field. The sheep and goats browse on the same pasture. Vessels, some to honor and some to dishonor, are found in the same family, the same community, the same church.\par \par But not so in that Day. He, who judges "in righteousness," will separate the one from the other. When the angels with sickle in hand, of whom we have spoken, receive the mandate, "Thrust you in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe," the myriads mown down by these celestial Reapers are to be bound in distinct and separate bundles; some for the heavenly garner; others to be "cast out." The great gulf of separation is fixed forever. "Watch, therefore, and pray always, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man."\par \par Reader, are you prepared for this hour of solemn judgement? Are you able to look forward to it with joyful hope and expectancy as the day of your complete and final glorification; when the Lord, the Righteous judge, will confess your name "before His Father and before His holy angels," and welcome you "to inherit the kingdom?" It is "the day of the REVEALING of the sons of God." It will then be found that God's people were in this world often hidden--unknown; often their goodness and graces and virtues unacknowledged, misrepresented, or scorned; their failures or inconsistencies unduly magnified and exaggerated; their light hidden under a bushel, or prematurely quenched by persecution and death. But "THEN shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father!" That second coming was to the early Christians their cherished harbor of refuge in the midst of environing storms--"And to wait for His Son from heaven." "The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and the patient waiting for Christ." "Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draws near."\par \par Moreover, it is well worth noting, that in the inspired epistles, it is not the day of death which is spoken of or LOOKED FORWARD TO BY THE CHURCH WITH JUBILANT EXPECTATION, but THE DAY OF CHRIST'S APPEARING. It is that day which gives the sacred writers their strongest motives and incentives, not only for the urging of watchfulness, but for the cherishing of hope, faith, and joy. Need we wonder at this? Death is no pleasing theme--though the Christian's last enemy, it is an enemy still--'the King of Terrors.' But the second Advent of the divine Savior--is identified with final triumph over death; when "this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality; and the saying shall be brought to pass as it is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'" Not only so, but that "vile body" (itself a part of the redemption-purchase) will come forth from the dishonors of the grave, fashioned like the glorious body of its glorified Redeemer.\par \par In the experience also of God's people this "blessed hope" has calmed, and cheered, and elevated many a pilgrim in his passage through the dark valley. It is said of a distinguished judge of the English bench that, on sending for Archbishop Usher as he felt death approaching, he declared to that pastor, that amid all the collected stores of human learning and erudition he had in his rare library, there was but one sentence on which he could rest with comfort, and that sentence was from holy Scripture--"The grace of God, which brings salvation, has appeared unto all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, and righteously, and godly in this present world; looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ."\par \par How many anguished, BEREAVED mourners, also, have had their grief calmed and their tears dried, by this same sublime antidote of the great Apostle, as he points them on to the second coming of their Lord, and associates that coming with the restoration of their beloved dead! "I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, them also who sleep in Jesus, will God bring with Him." At that blessed season when "the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people; and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God"--amid these revived friendships and indissoluble reunions, "God"--the God on the throne--the Brother-man--"shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."\par \par Nor is the anticipated joy of that Day altogether a personal and selfish one. No small element of it is the believer's joy at the GLORY which will then encircle the brow of his adorable Lord. It will be the PUBLIC ENTHRONEMENT OF JESUS of Nazareth. He will come "to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired of those who believe." All the humiliations of His first coming--the manger--the carpenter's home--the unsheltered head--the nights of wakeful anguish--the scorn, and taunt, and jeer--the piercing thorns--the bitter cross--the ignominious sepulcher--all, all now exchanged for the shout of welcome--"Lo! this is our God, we have waited for Him."\par \par How often, among His own people on earth, is He dishonored--wounded in the house of His friends--the unsullied glory of the Master tarnished with the blemishes and inconsistencies of the disciples. But not so on that Day. Even these marred, blotted, imperfect images and reflections, shall then, at least, become perfect copies and transcripts of their glorious divine Original--"We know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." "I saw," says John, "the Holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."\par \par Let us only remark, in closing, that the best preparation for His second coming to judge, is to rest, with firm believing trust and confidence, in His first coming to save. "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and to those who look for Him shall He appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation." Seek to be now forming the character you would wish to have completed and perfected, when the Advent shall take place--"Let every man that has this hope in him purify himself ever as He is pure."\par \par Whatever your earthly duties be, do them nobly, purely, faithfully--keeping, amid the rough wear and tear of a work-day world, a conscience void of offence. Not like some of the enthusiasts of the Pauline age, who, in the erroneous anticipation and interpretation of that Advent, deserted their posts of duty, and surrendered themselves to an existence of dreamy contemplation--but rather, in the midst of your laborious callings, glorify in these the Lord who redeemed you--prosecuting your prescribed path, whatever it be. Only remembering thus to pursue, with the loins girded and the lamps burning, and being like those who are waiting for the coming of the Lord.\par \par With such a glorious inheritance reserved for God's children, what are earth's pomps and vanities? How do its riches, and honors, and ambitions pale into utter nothingness before the approaching blaze of that advent throne! "Blessed is he who watches and keeps his garments." Blessed is he, who, in whatever calling he is called, therein abides with God. Thus remaining expectant in this glorious Rock-cleft, we can mark the rainbow-arch which spans the sky of the future, connecting the cross with the crown; and say, in lowly believing confidence, with one of the Church's noblest watchers, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me AT THAT DAY!"\par \cf1\fs23\par } 33)Y 15 Christ the Judge{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CHRIST THE JUDGE\par \par "Fo sublime themes which, in the preceding pages, have occupied our thoughts, would be incomplete, without adverting, however briefly, to the grandest and most glorious Rock-cleft of all--the confidence which the believer enjoys in the anticipation of the reign of the glorified redeemer in the midst of his triumphant church, throughout the ages of eternity.\par \par In the preceding views of Christ's character and work, and of the official relation in which He stands to His people, He has been brought before us as "the shadow of a Great Rock in a weary land." During their wilderness travel, when the fierceness of the desert heat, the sirocco-breath of fiery temptation and trial, is beating on their unsheltered heads, they know the blessedness of journeying to these secure refuges, and of hiding themselves there "until the indignation be past." But when "the dry and thirsty land" is ended, and Canaan entered--when the twin foes, Sin and Death, have been finally conquered, and the ransomed multitudes are ushered amid the glories of a sinless, sorrowless, deathless immortality--is "the Great Rock," then, to become only a memory of the past--recalled only as a sheltering covert while sojourning among the mists and glooms of the Valley of Tears?\par \par No; if we can with reverence use the simile; like that strange mass of rock, the Rock of the Sakrah, which the traveler to Jerusalem who has seen it, can never forget--rising in mysterious impressiveness in the very midst of the old Temple area--so shall the Rock of Ages remain conspicuous, through everlasting years, in the center of the glorified Temple of the true City of God--Yes, a Rock, with its sacred clefts and fissures standing in the midst of "the house not made with hands"--whose walls are salvation and its gates praise! Stripping it of metaphor, Jesus is to reign forever in the midst of His saints. His humanity will, in the future, be co-eternal with His divinity. Of His mediatorial kingdom and government there is to be no end.\par  \par We seem, indeed, to gather from various passages of sacred Scripture, that the regal sway which at present He exercises over His enemies, human and Satanic, is, at "the end of all things"--the winding up of the present dispensation--to cease. Now (adopting, the application of the words of the 8th Psalm made by an inspired writer), God has "put all things under His feet." To the Prophet of Patmos, we have seen Him represented in vision, not only walking in the midst of His Churches (symboliz ed by seven golden candlesticks), but holding the seven stars in His hands. Now, He is exalted not only to be Head of His Church, but Head over all things FOR the Church. As the adorable Guardian of her blood-bought rights and prerogatives, He sways the scepter of universal empire in her behalf. "Say among the heathen that the Lord reigns--the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved--he shall judge the people righteously." But this portion of His mediatorial sway, "the KINGDOM OF CHRIST over this world," is to be surrendered, so soon as the last member of His triumphant host has entered within the walls of the heavenly city--placed forever beyond the hostility alike of wicked men and of blaspheming devils.\par \par The limits of His reign are defined alike in Old and New Testament Scripture. Listen to the language of ancient prophecy--"The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at My right hand, UNTIL I make Your enemies Your footstool." Or hear the apostolic testimony claiming in Him th e fulfillment of these same words--"He must reign UNTIL He has put all enemies under His feet." "THEN comes the end, when He shall have delivered up (this part of) the kingdom to God even the Father that is, when He shall have put down all (wicked, and impious, and oppressive) rule, and all authority and power."\par \par Not only so, but when the triumph over His own and His people's enemies is complete, He gives over this subsidiary administration into the hands of the Father. The affairs of th e universe are henceforth to be conducted as they were previous to the incarnation. Like a mighty river which has finished its course, and which mingles its waters in the everlasting volume and the rest of the ocean which gave it birth, that part of the mediatorial sovereignty, which extends beyond the pale of the ingathered and glorified Church, will be merged and absorbed in the sway of God absolute. "And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him who put all things under Him, that God" (in the only true Pantheistic sense, rescuing the word from its modern perverted meaning) "may be all in all."\par \par On the other hand, (and this aspect of the subject which now concerns us), as the Mediator of His glorified Church in heaven, there are to be no limits set to the tenure and exercise of his Kingly and Priestly offices. As it is expressed in the prophetic Psalm, to which we have just alluded, with reference to His royal Priesthood--"You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek;" or in the emphatic comments on the same, given in the Epistle to the Hebrews--"Having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abides a priest continually. Made not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life. This Man, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. He ever lives to make intercession--He is consecrated for evermore."\par \par In the most impressive of His own parables, the Redeemer seems to speak as if "the end of the age" were thus to form the true commencement of His limitless reign. For then it is He calls Himself, for the first time, by the title of "the King,"--as He invites His blood-bought subjects to inherit the kingdom He had won.\par \par Similarly, in the parable of 'the Pounds,' when, under the figure of the nobleman "returning from the far country," He is spoken of as "having received the kingdom;" so far from abdicating His mediatorial scepter, "His appearing and His kingdom" are spoken of as identical, dating from the hour when He shall judge both the quick and the dead. It is His coronation-day, "the day of His espousals, the day of the gladness of His heart." "Let us be glad and rejoice, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife has made herself ready."\par \par The title given to Him by the great Apostle, and upon which we have dwelt, as one of the most blessed of the believer's Rock-clefts, will have an eternal meaning and signification--"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and FOREVER." In that sublime figure in the Apocalypse, referred to also in a previous chapter, we behold the glorified Mediator under the emblem of a SLAIN LAMB, with the scars of earthly suffering still visible--(the impressive memorials of His anguish and bloody sweat--His cross and passion)--adored by a multitude which no man can number--even by "ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands." Their ascription indicates the duration of His sway--"Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto Him who sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever."\par \par Similarly, in the still sublime passage and vision of the white-robed and palm-bearing multitude, that same Jesus, in His offices of immutable love--the same adorable Redeemer, under His suffering title, and designation of the "Lamb"--is represented, in the midst of the throne, as "feeding them," and "leading them to the living fountains of waters;" and with the identical hand that was nailed to the cross "wiping away all tears from their eyes;" as if Eternity's comment on the precious words of the old prophet, now so familiar to us, "A MAN shall be as\'85the shadow of a great Rock!"\par \par At the sounding of the seventh angel, the voices in heaven which proclaimed His final conquest of the world-kingdoms, are heard proclaiming, "He shall reign forever and ever." And, not to dwell on other delineations of the future, given in the same inspired record, the sublime closing vision of "the Holy City, New Jerusalem "with its river, and trees of perennial fruit--attests alike the termination of the reign of evil--"the curse,"--and the perpetuity of the reign of Christ--the Author and Dispenser of all "blessing"--"There shall be no more curse but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him."\par \par From these then, and other similar passages in holy Scripture, we gather the exalted truth, that, though the "subsidiary sway of the divine Redeemer over His foes, human and angelic," is to be terminated, He is to "reign over the house of Jacob forever"--that through the endless years of eternity, the Rock of Ages, with its glorious clefts and unscalable heights, is to remain bathed in the sunlight of heaven. His redeemed are still to love Him as Mediator, while they adore Him as God. "You set a crown of pure gold on His head. He asked life of You, and You gave it to Him, even length of days forever and ever." "His name shall endure forever. His name shall be continued as long as (yes, longer than) the sun." "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever." "If I go to prepare a place for you," was His own gracious declaration, "I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there you may be also."\par \par The perpetuity of that mediatorial office and reign over the Church of the First-born, we may regard in a twofold light. (1.) As the stipulated REWARD OF THE REDEEMER'S SUFFERINGS on the part of the Father--the fulfillment of glowing words spoken centuries before the Incarnation--"When You shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied."\par \par (2.) The continuance of His official character and administration, is represented by Christ Himself as THE PLEDGE AND GUARANTEE FOR THE PERMANENCE OF HIS PEOPLE'S BLISS. "Because I live, you shall live also." Their lives are "hidden with Christ in God." They "shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ." They "sit with Him upon His throne." His presence as Mediator constitutes the divine tenure, by which, as kings and priests they hold their crowns and censers. So that, if we dare use so strong a simile, that Rock of Ages must first crumble in pieces, before they can be divested of their inviolable bliss--their blood-bought privileges. The song of earth will thus be echoed and perpetuated by the Redeemed around the throne--made the never-ceasing anthem of heaven, "O come, let us sing unto the Lord--let us make a joyful noise to THE ROCK OF OUR SALVATION!"\par \par Most blessed and elevating thought!--the whole redeemed Church--under the Psalmist's beautiful emblem of a dove--with its once soiled and ruffled plumage, now "covered with silver and its feathers with yellow gold," flashing back the glorious sunlight--delighting still, as on earth, to perch in these eternal Rock-clefts--no longer "hastening its escape from the windy storm and tempest," but folding its wings in the perfected bliss of everlasting rest and everlasting love!\par \par Here on earth, the Church is represented as only seeing her Beloved "through the lattice,"--obtaining brief and passing glimpses of Him. Here the Rock of Ages is beheld often through looming mists, or at all events, gleams of sunshine alternate with obscuring clouds. Not so in that bright world! Nothing is there to dim, or darken, or blur the vision. "We shall see Him as He is."\par \par In a nobler sense than that of present security, "we shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." The closing petition of His own priestly prayer will be everlastingly fulfilled--"Father, I will that those also whom You have given me be WITH ME where I am, that they may behold My glory." Who can tell but that in the revelation of that glory, it may be with the Church in heaven as with the Church on earth, that the Divine Being can only be discerned mediately; that no one (no, not even a glorified saint) can gaze on the unveiled lusters of Deity. The words may hold as true in a world of blessedness as in a valley of tears--"No man can see My face and live." How then shall the great Jehovah be most appropriately revealed to the eyes of adoring worshipers? Shall it not be through the same divine medium by which He was unfolded to His Church on earth--when as the Christ incarnate they beheld His glory--the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; "the Image of the Invisible God?" Thus revealed as "the slain Lamb" with scars and blood-marks--thus revealed as "the smitten Rock" with its clefts and gashes--these will be, to the Church triumphant, EVERLASTING REMEMBRANCES ALIKE OF THE VILENESS OF SIN, AND OF THE VASTNESS OF JEHOVAH'S LOVE!\par \par In closing these transcendent themes, let the solemn--all-important personal question press itself with ever-renewed and augmented earnestness; can we (each of us) with some good measure of humble yet triumphant confidence, appropriate Christ as OUR God and Savior? Are we able in any feeble degree to make the noble avowal of the great Apostle our own--"To me to live is Christ?" Are we cherishing, in any humble measure, as our life-long aspiration, that we "may win Christ, and be FOUND in Him." Found in the Rock-clefts now, are we able to make the challenge of an assured present acceptance and peace--"It is God who justifie s, who is he that condemns?"\par \par Found in the Rock-clefts in all the times of our present TRIBULATIONS, are we able, amid the fragile blessings and fleeting pleasures of earth--to claim a better and more enduring portion, and to say, "My flesh and my heart fails, but God is the Rock of my heart and my portion forever?"\par \par Found in the Rock-clefts in all time of our present BLESSINGS; are we able to disown perishable refuges; and exulting in divine and more enduring confidenc!es, to tell as the secret of true happiness--"In the Lord put I my trust, why do you say to my soul, flee as a bird to your mountain?"\par \par Found in the Rock-clefts in the hour of DEATH; while the silver cord is fast loosing, and the golden bowl is in the act of being broken; as life, and those whose presence and smile have made life joyous, are fast dimming from sight, shall we be able thus to triumph in Him who alone is "without change"--"The Lord lives, and blessed be my Rock; and let the" God of my salvation be exalted?"\par \par Found in the Rock-clefts on the Day of JUDGMENT--shall we be able then, as we look unawed on passing heavens, a dissolving earth, and burning worlds, to exclaim--"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"\par \par Found in the Rock-clefts through all ETERNITY; under the consciousness of their unassailable security, shall we be able to enter into the Apostle's words, when (conjuring up in his enumeration every possible form of antagonism #and evil), among others, he defies "things to come"--the cycles of eternity--ever to separate from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?\par \par "And now, all glory to God, who is able to keep you from stumbling, and who will bring you into his glorious presence innocent of sin and with great joy. All glory to him, who alone is God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Yes, glory, majesty, power, and authority belong to him, in the beginning, now, and forevermore. Amen." Jude $1:24-25\par \par O ROCK OF AGES! swathed in clouds of light,\par Whose heights unclimbed, never foot of angel trod\endash\par Ancient of days--Almighty--Infinite!\par Older than Nature's eldest-born--Great God\endash\par \par We praise, we bless, we magnify Your name!\par And as before the birth of Time were Thou,\par So, through unending ages still the same,\par Past, present, future, one eternal Now!\par \par You did des%cend from everlasting bliss,\par In manger born, to raise us up on high;\par A woe-worn Pilgrim in earth's wilderness,\par Wedding our finite dust with Deity.\par \par Around Your path no blazoned banners wave;\par No jeweled diadem Your brows adorned;\par Your cradle borrowed, and a borrowed grave;\par Servant of servants, poor, despised, and scorned!\par \par The spotless Lamb is to the slaughter led,\par The Son of man a&nd Lord of Glory dies;\par For us! for us! He bowed His thorn-wreathed head:\par O mystery transcending mysteries!\par \par The mighty triumph is at last complete,\par Hell's myriad hosts are vanquished and uncrowned,\par Death lays his scepter at the Victor's feet,\par And captive millions rise with chains unbound.\par \par Nor this alone--He left His Throne of light!\par The secret hid from ages past to tell;\par The Reve'lation of the Infinite,\par The Image of the Great Invisible.\par \par A Father's love disclosing unto all;\par The poor, the lost, the burdened, the oppressed\par Not one excluded from the gracious call\endash\par "Come unto Me, you weary, and have rest!"\par \par Peace for the guilty, stung with conscious sin;\par Peace for bereaved ones wailing for their dead;\par Peace amid waves without and storms within,\par The troub(led soothed, the mourner comforted.\par \par O Savior God, ascended up on high,\par You true High Priest within the Temple-veil,\par To all that call upon You ever nigh,\par "Prince who has power with God, and must prevail;"\par \par You who do reign Your Church's Lord and Head,\par With many crowns upon Your regal brow,\par You who shall come to judge both quick and dead,\par Great Rock of Ages! hide Your servant now\endash\par \par That when archangel's trumpet is pealing loud,\par "When every mountain shall a Sinai be"\par When sun and moon shall wear their sackcloth shroud,\par Creation in her final agony\endash\par \par "Found" in Your clefts, and shielded by Your might,\par From Your blest love and presence nothing may sever;\par Earth's shadows merged in Heaven's unclouded light,\par Securely sheltered in THE ROCK, FOREVER!\par \par \cf1\fs23\par } ((<5Q16 Christ Reigning over His Church Forever{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 CHRIST REIGNING OVER HIS CHURCH FOREVER\par \par "He shall reign forever and ever."--Rev. 11:15\par \par The contemplation of the